Goals?

Going to the funny memes since this is a heavy blog post

I'm doing something a little different this year and not setting traditional goals per the Jane Pike way of doing things. If you're curious what I'm talking about you can check out the podcast where she specifically talks about this here. 

However, that doesn't mean that I'm not going to talk about plans and progress for the year, it's just that I'll be sharing my action steps rather than larger goals, or dreams as Jane Pike talks about. I'm planning to outline the action steps I'm working on now and update the blog with progress on them on a regular basis throughout the year to make sure I'm not losing ground.

In thinking through those action steps for the year and how I can structure my to do list in order to be successful I'm going to have include an update on this blog. Even if you don't read the rest of this wall of text make sure to check out the last item.

This year I'm going to really work to maintain focus on doing what I can do and not putting time and frustration into things that I know aren't going to be possible. With that in mind, here are my current action steps that I plan to carry through the year.

Action Steps:

-Managing My Anxiety: I'm going to be working through the materials from Jane Pike and practicing the skills I learn there. I'm still working on finding a therapist that I gel with so that may happen this year as well. This also involves practicing the skills I'm learning with Katai which will hopefully help with her anxiety.

-Build A Good Team: I've recently found a body work professional that I think is fantastic and we have a vet I really like. I'd like to find someone who does Chiro that I can schedule with as needed and I'm curious about trying PEMF. I also need to find a saddle fitter who can check her saddle and back on a regular basis. You'll note I don't have an instructor on this list and that's because my only instructor options would be a trailer ride away. I'm going to take advantage of any opportunities I have this year but otherwise it's our year for me to get us back to where we were which I'm confident I can do.

-Work Outside: One of the big things I can do to help Katai's anxiety at shows is to spend a bunch of time this year working on getting her more comfortable outside. I finally have access to a wonderful outdoor arena and so many trails. This is our year to really focus on working outside. Plus this is completely free lol

-Continue to work on my Finances: I've made such huge progress with following a budget over the last year or so and I want to continue to work on that. I'm putting a lot of focus into paying down high interest debt and sticking to my budget. I've been pretty good but still go over on food/coffee on a regular basis. I don't go way over but ideally I should have some left at the end of two weeks so my goal is to start to get to that point.

-Build Fitness for Myself and Katai: The main thing I'm going to do is increase what I'm already doing. I'm going to increase my average step count, track calories, ride 2-3 times per week, and do short, easy workouts on the other days with focus on building strength. Specifically for Katai she'll be getting ridden 2-3 times per week (for now) and lunged once per week. As the year goes on I'm hoping to increase the number of rides/works to 5-6 per week. One item I'm really going to be focusing on is building strength and time at the canter.

-Showing up: This is a big one and that's to just keep showing up. To this purpose, one of the things I learned about myself when I was going every day is that I need to just go whenever I can and not to try to stick to a set or specific schedule. That's not to say that I'm only going to go when it's convenient, just that  especially during the winter when the weather could prevent me from going, I need to go every day that I can even if that means that I go 10 days in a row since then there might be 5 days in a row where I can't go. It also means just going even if I'm not feeling motivated or if I'm tired etc. because once I get there I can pretty much promise that I'll feel better and get something accomplished. To hold myself accountable, and share with friends (which I enjoy) I'm going to do two things.

The not funny media, this has just been so helpful!

The first, I'm going to be journaling every ride, body work session, and anything else in the Equilab app. I REALLY wanted to find a way to do something on paper since I enjoy the process of writing but the problem is that it's too easy for me to not have my notebook or journal available when I have the time to write the entry where I always have my phone on me. In addition, there is so much other information I can capture through the Equilab app such as ride data.

Posting a picture of my sister's adorbs cat, Gritty, to signify that
the next paragraph is important since everyone loves cat media ;)

The second, for the next month or so (till the end of February at least) I'm going to experiment with letting this blog sit and doing more with Instagram. That isn't to say that I won't blog anymore ever, just that I'm going to give this a try. It also doesn't mean that I'm just going to keep doing Instagram the way I have been, instead I'm going to add more text, update more often, and add more media including photos and videos. I have friends on Insta that do this really well and I'm curious if this social media platform will work better for me. The reason? I've been struggling to find time and/or motivation to sit down at my computer and put together a blog worth of content. I have things throughout the day that I'd like to update everyone on but not enough to make a whole post. At first I thought it was just because I didn't have content but now, even when I've had more content I'm just struggling to put together a whole post.

If you aren't already following me on Instagram and you're reading the blog please add me to stay up to date for the time being! My Instagram account is @kataipony

If you are following me already or choose to follow me I'd love feedback on this experiment so please let me know what you think. Again, this isn't me ending this blog for the long term, just me trying something else for a bit to see if ti works better for me while still being a good platform for me to keep all of you up to date with all of my pony and personal happenings :)

Past Year Changes

So many changes have happened over the past year or so that I wanted to sort of summarize where we are now especially since I haven’t been good about updating my blog this year!

My new, much more limited, shared
tack set up in one small corner of the tack room

Tack:
- Fleece TSF Stretchtec girth liner
I love this thing! I worked really well for the pale skinned princess this summer and kept away the skin funk/girth galls that she’s occasionally picked up the past with her leather liner. It’s nice and fluffy without adding too much bulk and despite my minor misgivings that it would make my saddle more unstable it actually was fine probably in part due to the shape of the TSF girth.


- PS of Sweden reins
I’m not totally sold on these yet. I like how slim they are with my tiny hands and appreciate how soft they are but they’re thinner than traditional leather reins and less “sticky” so without my gloves they would slip right through my hands and even with my gloves I feel like I need to use more energy to hold them. Because they’re so thin they also twist so even when I don’t have them twisted they’re not straight between the bit and my hands and that drives me a little batty. I’m still using them and overall I like them but for the cost I probably would have stuck with my cheapo ($20ish) Horze plain black pony reins.

- Bates “webber” style leathers
I totally love these! I was in the camp of not being able to feel the additional bulk from regular leathers, or at least not until I switched to these. Now I can clearly feel a difference and I’m happy to put up with the slight additional fussiness of running these up for that really close contact feeling. I’m also thrilled that my leathers finally are black to match my saddle.



I'm very glad that grass is now only available when hand grazing

Feed:
- CA Trace
As I was falling further down the barefoot rehab rabbit hole I found out a lot more about diet and with some help from FeedXL made some big changes to what Katai is eating. She’s now getting CA Trace pellets and since I can’t get those through Smartpak I’ve canceled my smartpaks. I am getting Magnesium 5000 through them still but I’m getting the bucket on auto ship vs. the smartpaks. She’s also getting whole flax seed and plain white salt. That’s it! Her coat and feet are looking really good so I’m pleased with everything right now.

- Treats
I found some great low sugar treats that don’t break the bank so I’ve gone from feeding peppermints (which she was getting a decent amount of over the summer) to these apple treats just to try to reduce the sugar content in her diet further



Luckily the arena is nicely well lit since
most of my rides take place after dark at this point

Routine:
With so many life changes my routine has changed quite a bit this year. First I completely fell out of any routine haha. However, now that she’s so much closer and everything is quieting down a bit in my personal life I’m finding my routine again and I’m really loving our new schedule!

- Weekday Commute

At this point I’ve transitioned to going to the barn directly from work. Not only is the barn closer to my workplace than home (by maybe 10 minutes or so) but by going straight there from work I save the worst commute I have which is from work home during rush hour. This easily saves me 45+ minutes in the car and because of that I’m getting home from the barn around 6:30 which means that my full day away from home is long but I now have the rest of the evening free. 



Katai's new paddock. I love that she has a buddy and shelter!


- Weekend Schedule
With that instead of going both weekend mornings and 3 evenings during the week I’ve transitioned to going 4 evenings and one weekend day typically in the morning. This is allowing my bf and myself more flexibility on the weekend plus because I’m getting home so much earlier when I go during the week we just have more flexibility in general.

- Lesson Schedule
This has been a tricky one. With everything going on it’s been oddly tough to have a weekly commitment on a specific day. Not only does it limit when and how we plan to do things at home or go out on dates, see friends, etc. but it locks in the rest of my riding schedule since I typically want to ride at least the day before and preferably two days before my lesson and normally I give her the day after off. In addition I’ve been trying to be better about sticking to a budget. Moving to a barn where I’m spending less and saving on gas have both been helpful but lessons are a huge expense that I’ve also been trying to reduce. With that at this point I’m taking e/o week lessons on Tuesday evenings. This, so far, has been the right combination of routine enough to help with my motivation to get to the barn while also allowing for flexibility. I’m good at working on riding homework and since we’re both lacking strength a lot of what I’m doing is basically bringing her back into work so the additional time between lessons right now is actually really helpful.

Looking so much better! Ignore the white paste,
we're using baby rash ointment as a moisture barrier

Feet:
-As mentioned previously I’ve taken over doing Katai’s feet and one of my goals in October was to have a mentor and friend stop by and check my work. She did and felt that Katai’s feet looked really good! She had some great suggestions for me and she’s going to do a re-check in 6 or so weeks and then likely I’ll have her out more ocassionally.

I really like this barn. It's nice and airy and open and kept extremely clean.

Doing the Thing

Well that escalated quickly…

As I was looking at numbers about owning a trailer vs. moving to a different barn vs. trying to come up with other options I reached out to a couple of friends, H and we’ll call her M. Both are competitive pony riders and H has, of course, been talked about in this blog before. M I know more through social media but she’s in the same area that I’m in and I’ve seen her at shows before. She’s currently riding 4^th (?) level with her pony.

Cute fluffy puppy is cute and fluffy

I had become aware of where she boarded over the past year or so and the barn she’s at is one of the barns I’d mentioned that was within my budget as long as I dial back lessons slightly. I’d been really chewing over if that was something I wanted to do since I’m all about education first, fun later. However, I’m honestly at a place where I think I could do ok without weekly lessons. Definitely not without lessons completely since I am very much a beginning dressage rider but I’m confident that I could do ok with 1-2 lessons per month. In the past when I’ve missed lessons for up to a month I did fine at my following lesson and had been able to take action on almost all of my homework.

I was still hesitant since along with increased cost, fewer lessons, a smaller indoor arena, and a longer drive it meant moving Katai and myself and all of the stress and change that goes along with that. Despite my love of change and my, sort of, gypsy life style over the past several years I’m at a point where I don’t want to keep shifting. I’m tired of moving and I’m tired of change right now especially after the past several months and I really thought that I’d be with Jane until she retired.

 

Also had a boot spa day and unfortunately found that I'm going to need to
replace these. After 5 years of constant
use the leather on the foot cracked open

However, I had some text communication with M and email communication with the barn manager/owner who we’ll call S2. The barn was quite full but they have a small group that does consistent dressage shows during the year and they were looking for another dressage show participant. There were some changes coming up that might have left an opening so I scheduled time to see it earlier this week. I went to see it and felt like I was literally in heaven.

ALL of the things I’ve wanted since I’ve been owning horses were present at this barn including a dressage instructor, the ability to help trailer train, fantastic footing, indoor and outdoor arena, stalls, lots of turnout, FANTASTIC hay, fantastic care, very generously bedded stalls, amazing ventilation, four heated wash stalls, heat lamps over the grooming areas, TONS of trails as in miles and miles of trails through woods, meadows, hills, roads etc.  In addition, they routinely travel to some of the really big shows in our region, participate in regionals, and have a fantastically supportive show team that has all the infrastructure to make it fun.

I got to meet S2 who I’ve only met in passing at shows before. I also got to meet the guy who works at the barn (we chatted for a while about my Smartcar), S2’s spouse, and some other people at the barn. I was there for over 2 hours chatting with M and company and getting two tours J. Honestly while I love where I’m at this was an easy decision considering all of the factors. Plus, it could completely eliminate the need for me to get a trailer in which case I can use my trailer savings to pay for shows and replacing a couple of key pieces of equipment.

I went ahead and let both of them know (M sort of co-manages show schedules and the show group stuff and has been there for a long time so I know the right people ;) and found out that I actually could move in as soon as 4/6. Cue total panic. I, of course, need to give Jane a month notice and I need to figure out travel over there. In addition, they’d like me to come with them to a large show out of state at the end of May. Cue more panic haha. I haven’t shown since last July was it? This will be my first real rated show (not opportunity classes) and I haven’t even ridden very consistently all winter with everything going on. However, I have just about two months and all of the buttons are still there so I’m confident that with consistent rides we’ll be very capable of doing a couple of first level tests at that show.

As of right now I’m aiming to move middle of April (of course still paying Jane through the end of the month) and will plan to take at least a couple of lessons with S2 prior to the show in May. I’ll do a few seperate posts on the details soon but for now I’m completely over the moon and sooooooooo excited to move!

Intention - Blog Update #1

She looks somewhere between adorable and
possessed in this picture so of course I had to share

Well guys I certainly had no intention of taking that sort of break from blogging! I feel like this year was even a longer break than last year and last year I was dealing with some pretty serious seasonal depression. This year, very happily, the reason(s) I haven't been blogging are very happy for the most part.

Because there is just so much going on and a fair amount happening with Katai I figured I would do a couple of update posts rather than trying to fit it all in one and then be in a good place to recap 2017 and start 2018 strong!

So, to start the update, awhile ago I had mentioned three exciting things I had in the works that I couldn't share yet. One of those didn't really go anywhere yet but will soon and that's that I'll be moving early next year and was hoping to move much closer to the barn. I had started to look for apartments but realized that it was still so early that it didn't make sense to look.

First bath today <3

The second thing was my friends moving to the barn. As of end of October they're all moved in and things are setting back down there. I'm really enjoying having them there and luckily it's a great combination of having people around but still having the arena to myself on a fairly consistent basis. In fact, if I had my druthers I'd probably want them around a bit more than they are which is a good problem to have.Not only am I enjoying having them there but they're LOVING the barn and Jane's instruction. All three of them have said that they're enjoying riding again and loving the program and the setup of the barn. I'm really happy for them and glad that I could help them find a great place to move to.

The third thing is, of course, my new puppy Mashiara or Moshy for short. She is absolutely the best puppy in the entire world and I'm totally head over heels in love with her. Anyone who follows me on Instagram (and if you don't you should since I'm more able to quickly post there) has seen her in all of her adorable cuteness already.

I've LOVED every minute of having rescue dogs but they do come with baggage and I've always wanted a puppy at some point. I have no doubt that I'll mess some things up but it is nice to not need to deal with set in behavioral stuff right from the beginning. It's also AMAZING how quickly she picks things up! She already sits on cue, knows her name, and has a MUCH more reliable fetch than Veggie does. She's also good with stuff like nail clipping and bathes which I'm working hard to not mess up. I guess I sort of didn't think she'd be this trainable since Chihuahua's are typically fairly stubborn little dogs that weren't exactly bred for obedience but so far (knock on wood) she's been really easy to train. I've got her signed up for a puppy class already and now I'm also sort of thinking about continuing with a few basic obedience classes after that puppy class is done.

She's very helpful with Christmas preparations

Of course all of these things have distracted me from blogging and, as mentioned previously, Katai and I had gone through a rough patch and are just in an in-between sort of time with riding where she needs more strength and to change her way of going and those aren't quick things. Because of that I just didn't have as much to blog about which wasn't inspiring me to find the time to sit down and blog.

Contemplating what to do with a toy that large

I have one more thing that's been distracting me from blogging and that's a relationship. I'm not someone who's particularly private and I know I've shared relationship things, both good and bad, on here in the past but this time I'm keeping it more private. What's important is that I'm really happy right now and spending a lot of time with this person. I've been more focused on that and continuing to ride and manage a new puppy and still (STILL!) stressful work days that blogging just needed to take a back seat.

A little blurry but proof of how good the Vegetable has been.
I think this was her second day home.

I can't promise that it's going to get much better over the next few months but I do want to close out the year as strong as I can. I'll have another update soon about more of what Katai and I have been up to!

Christmas Updates

Wow, I've been a bad blogger. Between not having a car, Christmas stuff, family stuff, and personal stuff it's been a crazy few weeks. I also tend to not take much time off around the holiday so I've been fitting Christmas stuff in around a mostly full workload.

It's looking like I'll be able to pick up my car tomorrow morning, more on that later, and holiday stuff is starting to quiet down so hopefully I'll be back in the full swing of blogging very soon. However, I did want to post a few updates starting with my gift from the Blogger Gift Exchange!

I sent my gift just before the deadline of 12/19 and haven't heard anything so plan to follow up soon. However, I received my amazing gifts a week or so ago and it's just been so crazy that I didn't get it posted right away. My gifts were from Kristen at Stampy and the Brain and they are awesome! This is my first year participating and I'd mentioned that coat care or hair care items would be good.

Kristen got me a spray bottle, wonderful flicker brush, and some hair moisturizer that I'm anxious to try out! I also got an adorable note pad and a really cute card. It was so great getting a surprise for Christmas, I had a great time participating and can't wait to do this again next year :)

I also wanted to post an update about my car. I dropped it off at the shop on Thursday morning last week and they've had it ever sense. Of course Christmas delayed things and they've been great to work with. Unfortunately my car was totaled but in this case since it's very drivable and just ugly I'm going to retain it and keep driving it. I can't wait to get it back especially so that I can go to the barn.

Sadly the only times I've been to the barn in more than a week are for my lessons the Tuesday before Christmas and the Tuesday after Christmas. Understandably for my ride yesterday Katai was stiff and felt a little tight and sore especially since she was very in heat. All of the crazy weather changes we've been having lately certainly aren't helping. My goal is to make it to the barn every day through Sunday once I have my car. I'm missing my little ladybug so much!

Updates and PSA

I had this whole post done and then for some reason it wouldn't save or post. I, unfortunately, thought that it had so instead of copying it all to save it I just clicked away and lost all that work :(

At any rate my PSA is to please take pictures and videos for yourself of the bad moments. I went back through this blog and was disappointed that I hadn't done more to share the bad moments especially at J's. Katai was such a disaster there that it wasn't like I was all excited to get pictures of her worst moments. At the time I wasn't sure it was going to get any better and that was scary, but now I wish that I'd preserved more of that so that I could look back and see how far we've come. So, learn from me and capture that for yourself, even if you don't want to share it :)

For updates first I wanted to share that Friday and today I was at my parent's place to see them, my sister, and to work on my tack locker!

We added the bottom to the locker (at the far end in the picture above) and the main shelf which you can see as well. We've got a few more pieces to assemble in this main cabinet part but then the majority of the assembly will be in the door.

Making the cutouts for the polo wrap shelves

I'm enjoying this project so much! It's so great to be able to work with and learn from my dad and it's going to be fun to have something to show for it at the end of this.

I also wanted to do a show plans update. Unfortunately everything up until now has fallen through. I really hate not having a trailer and being at other people's mercy. I get anxiety when I can't trust that something like this is actually going to work out since it involves a fair amount of planning on my part and especially with the financial piece of it. It's not like schooling shows are that expensive but my budget is tight. It also takes enough for me to psych myself up for getting my silly baby horse to a show without me feeling like I'm not sure if the trailer is going to actually show up.

At this point I've decided to change my plans a bit for this upcoming weekend (which was supposed to be a schooling show) and take a lesson with L's instructor instead. I'm actually really thrilled about it, just disappointed that I'm not going to be able to make another show. It sucks but until I can get my own trailer that's sort of where I'm at.

The reason this came up this weekend is that my barn is hosting a big name clinician that has quite a few people trailering in. My BM needs several more stalls so some people, including me, have offered to let the BM trailer their horses to a barn just down the road that belongs to L's trainer. It's mainly a boarding situation but because I work with L the instructor has agreed to do a lesson with me. I'm really excited and can't wait to do this with Katai. I think it will be great for Katai's trailering experience and will hopefully be easier on her than a show but still give us the opportunity to practice working away from home.