March Goals

I’m not even going to attempt to recap any goals for this year since we basically haven’t accomplished anything in 2019 yet beyond lots of vacation time. However in continuing with the theme of trying to post more positive things, looking ahead to the rest of March, and what I hope to accomplish, feels good.

Blog More:

My hope is that even if the weather continues to be awful I can still do some more blogging. I’m sure I can find things to blog about even if they aren’t substantial riding updates.

I also want to start trying to get more media even if it’s the snow outside our apartment, Katai eating hay in her stall, or Katai being fluffy and rolling in the arena.

Fitness:

My bf (who has a lot of yoga experience) finally convinced me to go to my first yoga class last Saturday. Unfortunately for him this ended up being a way more difficult class than it should have which made me slightly frustrated and left me feeling a little defeated. I HATE group fitness classes of any sort with a passion and while I was really hopeful that yoga would feel different this one didn’t. We went to a Vinyasa 1 class that apparently was more like a difficult Vinyasa 2 class and the class was packed so the yoga teacher wasn’t able to spend much time with anyone.

At any rate my amazing bf persevered and has convinced me to go to a yoga fundamentals class next Thursday. I’m actually looking forward to this one! I do want to do yoga, I just want to gain some understanding of how to do things correctly and then do it on my own at home and maybe just occasionally join him for a class.

Along with yoga I’m hoping to spend more time in our apartment gym even if that’s just walking on the treadmill and doing core work outs. I really want to get more in shape as I’m increasing my ride frequency.

Bone collection, check
Nap, check

Plan for Shows?:

This one unfortunately is pretty up in the air. I don’t know how I’ll show this year. I’m not sure who I’d trailer with, which trailer I could borrow if any, how much budget I’ll have for showing, or where Katai and I will be riding wise. Right now I’m planning to take things as they come and take opportunities as I can.

I’m very much going to be working to make sure we can show a handful of times this year but if that’s schooling shows this fall that’s ok. For that reason I haven’t paid for any memberships yet but will be proceeding with that if needed. However, I would like to go through and mark some shows that I’m interested in and try to keep those weekends open/start talking with a couple of the people I board with to see if they’d want to join me.

Additional Lessons/Clinic:

I’ve been working with K to do a few weekly lessons (vs. bi-weekly). Unfortunately the weather has been totally derailing this but I’m hoping that the next couple of weeks in March will work for this.

I’ve also signed up for “clinic” with a local, upper level dressage trainer. This person is K’s trainer (KM) and actually the first person I ever took a dressage lesson with way back when. It was supposed to be this past Saturday but, continuing the theme, was canceled based on the weather and was rescheduled for 3/30. My hope is that by then I’ll have had some good rides, a couple lessons at least, and will be feeling more prepared. This person is one option for additional lessons once K moves and I already have tentatively also planned to ride with her on 4/20.

We (the bf, his sister and I) went to Two Cellos
and also got to see Jon McLaughlin who opened for them

Finalize plans for once K is gone:

It’s extremely sad that K is going to be gone the end of this month. I’m going to work hard this month to get as many lesson with her as possible and then finalize plans for once she’s gone. I’ve stepped out of one of my Sunday DnD groups as of last Sunday so I now have more weekend time available which may mean that I can more easily get lessons with K when she’s here. I’m hoping to finalize that within the next couple of weeks.

In addition I’m going to continue to figure out additional options including the following;

• KM may be coming out once per month through summer and will most likely be coming out once per month at least until summer. When I clinic with her at the end of the month I’m planning to talk through plans with her as well as far as when I could get lessons with her.
• The gold medalist instructor who’s lessons I audited this past month also offered a lesson or two on her lesson horses. I may make a plan to do so either this month or next to keep that door open. Of course I also think it would be good for my continuing dressage education to ride a more trained horse and take advantage of any and all lesson opportunities.
• I’m also going to continue to look at other options for moving Katai whether for later this year or in the future just because in continuing to have conversations about it with my support system I think that making sure we have a place to land if/when this place closes is pretty important at this point.

Layers

What an appropriate name for this blog post. First, we’ve got the layers of snow. Snow that JUST KEEPS FREAKING FALLING and won’t give me a long enough break to get to the barn.

Seriously guys, not sure what I did but pretty sure I’m in some sort of 3 year run of bad luck. 2018 concluded with the illness from hell and I was encouraged that it would all be up from there but alas all that’s happened is extreme cold (windchills down to -50*s), and lots and lots of snow. I’ve barely been leaving the house at all and have only made it in to work about 7 days out of the past three weeks.

That’s bad.

Luckily I can work from home, unluckily I hate it and even worse, the same snow that has me working from home also means I haven’t been able to make it out to the barn much at all. At least my boss, who is an eventer, lives 5 minutes from her barn so even if she’s working from home she can still go to the barn. I’m very jealous lol.

I was going to wait to blog until I had more positive news to share but we’re into March at this point and there’s a lot more snow in the forecast and the days where we aren’t getting snow are really cold. Grrrrrrrrrrr

 Luckily I live with a really amazing person now and have an awesome puppy so time at home hasn’t been awful but I am just absolutely dying for some consistent, productive time at the barn and am feeling really motivated to make progress so it just sucks that the weather isn’t cooperating. Second, while I don’t have much really positive riding stuff to share I do have some updates that I wanted to share so I figured it made sense to post at this point.

The first update is that I actually did get a bit done at the barn over the last 10 days or so. I was able to make it out late not last week but the one before, on Saturday, and then again on Monday and I had my lesson last Tuesday! The bad news is that I forgot to bring riding clothes with me to work on Tuesday so I didn’t ride and instead K put a ride on Katai. However, it went really well and despite not riding much she was really impressed with the progress I’d made on my homework. T

he second update is that I audited a lesson two Thursdays ago for a fantastic, upper level, local trainer. I’m still figuring out what I’m going to do with K moving. For the short term I plan to stay and will try to make e/o week weekend lessons work. If they were weekdays it would be fine and I wouldn’t be that worried but I have a REALLY tough time fitting things in on the weekend so I’m worried about that. I’ve also been planning to increase my lessons this spring and either take weekly lessons, get more clinic time, or at least take more as needed so that we can officially progress up to second level.

Long term not only am I really sad to be losing my trainer but the farm I am at will also need to close at some point, likely, in the next few years. I don’t know (or understand) all of the details but the land was re-zoned as commercial so I signed on knowing that they had approx. 3 years at that point. The city may allow them to extend but if not, there will be a TON of displaced riders and horses all looking for space at the same time and I don’t want to deal with that. The two things together are causing me to look at new places despite wanting to be doing just about anything other than move Katai again.

She can't resist grabbing a bite of Alfalfa as we walk past

The good part of it? I really enjoyed the lessons I got to see. This person is very easy going but still firm, has their Gold medal so would be the most accomplished dressage show rider that I’ve had the chance to ride with, and is just fun and has a good sense of humor. Unfortunately she had a cold when I audited so was a little less chipper but still fun. The riders at that barn are very talented and I saw more upper level riders and horses there than I have at any other barn in a LONG time. The arena was also really nice, big, and had fantastic rubber mix footing. It was also really busy the entire time I was there from around 6-8:15 with at least 3-4 dressage riders in the arena at all times. I would ADORE being part of a community like that.

The less good? I’m on a waiting list with a few people ahead of me and it’s a tough place to get into since even if a sale horse there sells the new owners often keep it there. I’m also slightly nervous about the intensity. I feel like over the past few years I’ve discovered that there is a sweet spot for me where I can work, make progress, and be motivated but not shut down and still have fun. As I’ve had more things happen in my life outside of horses that balance has shifted slightly so while I REALLY want to ride consistently, make progress, blog more, and for heaven’s sakes finally show more!!! I’m also really conscious of the fact that if I swing too far into that sort of environment I may burn out and it might stop being fun. I’m doing a TON of thinking about the last point and still figuring out where/what type of barn I’d fit at best in the long run.

One big thing I’m considering is that J’s farm (not Jane although Jane’s was a close second) was my absolute favorite environment to be in. If J hadn’t been such a heavy handed person I would have stayed in a heartbeat. Part of me thinks that ever since being there I’m really looking for something similar and this place is so similar it’s eerie. Everything from the set-up of having a heated grooming area but unheated grooming area, to having more trails, to there being primarily dressage riders, to the level of the instructor (J had her silver medal when I was there but shortly after I left she got her gold), tack lockers, pasture board for most horses etc. It’s so similar. That is really encouraging. Add to that the fact that I had the most fun riding and made the most progress/was most motivated when I rode with J and Jane and I think this could be a fit. I've also asked my bf and he thinks I should go for it and I put a lot of stock in his opinion.

But I did get these cool socks. Consolation prize?

In other updates I also went to a tack sale at a great, local tack shop last night with K and another barn friend. That was awesome! Lots of horse talk and shopping. It's been a long time since I got to do something like that and I had so much fun. Again, making me even more sad that K is leaving :(