Updated Goals

My new coach made this adorable name plate for Katai's stall

I think it’s safe to say that I pretty much failed/will fail all of my 2018 goals. Rather than ignoring that and coasting for the rest of the year or feeling defeated by goals that are no longer appropriate I’m going to make some new goals.

October:
My goals for October are to get back to more consistency. I don’t really care what I accomplish but I at least want to go through the motions with the following things.

-Get to the barn 4-5 times per week
-Groom better
-Dress like we mean it (both me and Katai)
-Take two lessons
-Have barefoot trimmer friend check my hoof improvement work (third week in October)
-Build up to Katai wearing the BoT sheet for longer periods

November:
For November I’m hoping to get pretty much back to where we were when I left Jane’s
-Get to the barn 5+ times per week
-Make sure at least 1-2 of those times are not riding and work on other necessary things such as ground work, trailer loading(?), etc.
-Take two more lessons
-Continue with grooming better as possible with fluffy pony

December Goals:
For December I’m taking the pressure off both of us since I know it’s going to be tough to accomplish much while we adjust to the cold at a non-heated barn and with the holidays
-Step back a bit and have some fun including reducing to going to the barn 4-5 times per week
-Teach at least one “useful” trick such as targeting and/or stretching
-Focus on varying fitness with poles etc.
-Keep up on trimming Katai’s feet even with the cold
-Adjust to the cold in a non-heated barn
-Take at least one lesson

It's important to inspect inside one's nostrils 

Big picture goals for the rest of the year:
These are my bigger goals that I want to work on through the rest of the year
-Work on the following to strengthen the canter
                -Use square corners (at all gaits)
                -Straight rein backs, lots of them
                -Strengthen the walk to strengthen the canter. Focus more on walk and making sure that it’s mechanically strong and not just the gait that we do when we’re tired.
                -Canter/Walk/Canters -Get her stronger on the outside rein
-Re-address half halt (as a horse that has a tendency to rear my tendency has been to push her forward and rush her. In addition she’s a very forward horse. At this point though she needs to understand and listen to my half halts and halting aids and reply promptly)
-Start yoga on a consistent basis to gain strength and flexibility. My funds are short for the rest of the year so I’m going to follow in other bloggers’ footsteps and start following YouTube videos. Let me know if any of you have any suggestions for good ones!
-Lose some weight again. I swear there’s a thing with being in a relationship that’s as bad or worse than the freshman 15. I’ve put on a decent amount of weight and I’d like to lose it again. Luckily we live in an apartment that has an amazing, free gym!
-If the opportunity arises, ride in a clinic

Tack Storage

With the moves, for me and Katai, I needed to do a significant amount of downsizing. Not only did I lose storage space at the barn, I also lost a lot of storage space at the apartment.

At my last apartment I had an entire closet (that was pretty large) full of stuff as well as a large tack trunk. Even then I was often busting out of that space so it only made sense that when I moved in with another person I couldn’t necessarily expect to use the same amount of space for my passion (ie: buying all the horse things). However, I also wasn’t willing to get rid of TOO much stuff so when we officially signed the lease for this apartment I right away “called” one of the small hallway closets.

Tough to tell from this picture but at my old apartment
I had this HUGE closet and it was packed full of horse stuff. This doesn't even include the stuff I had in my antique horse trunk or my tack locker at the barn.

I wasn’t sure exactly how I’d fit all of my stuff in that space but I knew that I needed some dedicated space for all of the tack and horse items that I couldn’t keep at the barn and that I wanted that to be near the front door in a space where it could be a little messy as barn stuff often is. I had just been tossing stuff in there and it was reaching cartoonish levels when I saw an Instagram story from my new instructor of her tack set up. She had a full tack room to work with and I only had a small closet so I knew that I’d need to get creative to make my plan work but at least I now had something in mind. With that I began measuring the space I had and shopping online.

It just so happened that Target had a sale on shelves so while I started with looking on Amazon I quickly found something even better on Target. Unfortunately none of the dimensions worked out exactly the way I wanted but since I didn’t want to go custom I needed to find something close.

What it looks like now! Much smaller closet but much cuter organization :)

In the end, I purchased these really cute cube shelves! They may not be ideal from a storage set up perspective but for the cost they work well and the ability to use the storage cubes to organize all the small items is invaluable. I also had been wanting to hang my saddle pads for a long time and after seeing my instructor’s set up I settled on that as part of the plan. With that in mind I bought an adjustable curtain rod and two holders, one storage cube (I already had the other two), a couple of hangers and voila!

It doesn’t fit perfectly, the fact that it can’t be flush with the trim drives me very slightly nuts (but no way am I pulling the trim in an apartment and incurring the cost to fix it when we move out) but I can deal with that especially for the cost. Overall I think everything cost me just about $65 which I can definitely live with!

New Barn Feels

First I just want to put a note that I've been trying to comment on everyone's blogs but for some reason google isn't allowing me to submit comments. I thought it was just a temporary thing one day but I'm still not able to at this point. I'm going to reach out to support to get it figured out but in the meantime just know that I'm still reading them all!

Mostly I’m loving the new barn. I adore the arena which is the perfect combination of cozy, cute, and had pretty decent footing. It’s not spacious by any means but two people can ride fairly comfortably in it and, let’s face it, Katai is tiny so if I can’t maneuver her around a space this size I don’t have any hope of getting any geometry correct in any test at this point ;)

Katai has a nice sized stall, the hay is amazing, I love having a nice low key trail just outside her paddock, there’s a grazing pen for horses that are in dry lots just so that they can have a mini graze while their people hang out, 99% of the people are great (just like any barn), there are a ton of very long term boarders, the barn manger is FANTASTIC, and I really like my new instructor.

The only drawback so far has been that 1% of people here (let’s be honest, that’s one person) haven’t been very nice but I can handle myself and I’m hoping that with time that will calm down (side note, it's already gotten better between when I typed up this post and when I posted it). It’s never been an issue for me before since I’m good at making friends, I work hard, I’ve been around horses since I was 7 so I know a few things, I have good communication skills, and I tend to get along with everyone but for some reason there’s one person here who I apparently rub the wrong way. Oh well, we can’t all be friends with everyone.

The other main drawback is that the two larger, outdoor arenas are fairly rocky. They’re fine for most horses but Katai is barefoot and we’re rehabbing her hooves right now so she’s still a little tender. The last thing I want is for her to not trust her footing so we’ve just avoided both arenas for the most part. With winter coming it isn’t worth worrying about but we have a couple of ideas for how to combat it next year if her hooves still aren’t at the gravel crushing phase.

The best thing is that Katai has been calm, happy, relaxed, and just seems really content at this barn. She was happy at Janes but still had more anxious energy than she does here and it’s a huge improvement from the last barn where she constantly seemed to be in flight or fight mode for some reason. I’m also loving the cost and the much, much shorter commute.

In addition, K (my new instructor) is nicely low key and relaxed about things while still having great suggestions and I love how she explains theory. She’s also already talking about bringing me to shows next year which would be amazing. I’m excited to keep taking lessons with her and see how far we can go together! I also have plans with one of the amazing barn people who invited me to go to a hunter pace with her! With weather and other things we aren't going to be able to do the hunter pace this year but hopefully next year and we already have plans for a trail ride in a couple weeks!

Zen

There are so many new things going on that I don’t even know where to start! I was going to just post a bunch of updates in the one post but I’m getting tired of doing that so instead I’m going to do a bunch of more involved update posts about some of the things that are happening in my life right now.

During the move. Luckily it's cleaner now but not quite
where I'd feel comfortable sharing a picture on the internet

To start this off my boyfriend and I have successfully moved into our apartment together! This marks a huge step for me since I’ve never lived with a significant other. I can’t imagine a more amazing person to experience this with though. Yes, I’m pretty sappy about all of it.

Walking Moshy in our "backyard"

Our new apartment has amazing views of a couple of Minneapolis landmarks and we’ve got a great view from our public roof top. The gym is amazing, now I just need to make use of it, as are all of the other public spaces. I love the layout of our apartment as well as the fixtures and we have in unit laundry which is fantastic. We’re still in the moving in phase, even though we’re mostly unpacked, and working to find homes for some of those last pesky things. We also have a few more things to pick up from James’ apartment but 90% of our stuff is here at this point.

Moshy's favorite place to play guard dog

We were also excited to be entertaining friends for the first time this past Sunday doing something extremely nerdy *cough* D&D *cough* and we’re both looking forward to being able to do things like this. Neither of our past apartments were good for having people over so that was one of the things on our checklist when we picked this place.

We have gorgeous views!

It is still a bit small so we’ve both had to downsize a bit. Space wise it feels huge compared to my last apartment, which was only about 400 sq ft but that apartment only needed to fit my stuff and since my bf owned a home at one point he has way more things than I do. We’ve both done quite a bit of downsizing and have a bit more to go but we’re getting there and it’s starting to feel less cluttered. I also came up with a really cool set up for my horse stuff, at least the horse stuff I’ve been able to keep through the downsizing, but that’s for one of the next posts!

At night the view from our public access rooftop is spectacular

The Move

I hate moving Katai. It’s stressful needing to load her when I know she’s not always good and each time it’s a different trailer and a different person waiting on us. I also really hate changing up Katai’s routine and stressing her out. However, there have been good things about moving as much as we have. She’s very flexible with herds of horses (kind of like kids who move around a lot and get used to going to a lot of different schools haha) and I’ve made a whole bunch of amazing horse friends.

I was doing a good job of keeping my stress to a minimum until Saturday morning. Luckily my new trainer (K) was trailering and was planning to be there around 10:45 which gave me some breathing room in the morning to get everything packed, get coffee, and not need to wake up horribly early. I still got to the barn quite early just to make sure I had enough time and got her stall packed up, picked up her extra supplements, and then cleared out my tack locker. I wish I had taken a picture of everything in my SmartCar because it was kind of like a puzzle to get everything to fit well.

K and her mum showed up right on time and I went to collect Katai. I’d been saying my goodbyes but one of the barn workers wanted to say goodbye to Katai before she left so after I caught her I brought her over to say bye to him. The trailer was luckily a three horse slant which I knew would leave ample room. However, it was a step up which she hasn’t been in for a while now and it had a tack space in the back so the entrance was a little tight. All in all though she loaded really well in about 20 minutes. She did pull back several times but I’m getting much better at some of my loading techniques and just kept her facing the trailer the whole time and made her comfortable place right at the entrance and/or inside the trailer. K and her mom were extremely patient and just let me do my thing which I really appreciated!

Once Katai was loaded I realized I’d left her turnout halter up by the gate so I hopped in my car and drove up to the upper barn to get it while they started out with the trailer. The trip ended up being smooth but there was a TON of traffic and especially semi traffic on one of our main three lane highways. I followed a decent distance behind and was really glad it wasn’t a day where I was driving the trailer.

Once we arrived I pulled her out and we brought her over to quarantine which is a roundpen with a shelter. She hung out getting her land legs back and then rolled. She still stresses enough about trailering that she sweats a decent amount and it was also a hot day which didn’t help. I made sure she found the water and K tossed her some hay including some alfalfa which she immediately started scarfing down. At that point I dropped off some of the stuff they needed like her supplements, put her fly mask on, paid K for trailering and then headed out to let her destress.

I headed home, grabbed some amazing vegan food from the Herbivorous Butcher and then spent the rest of my Saturday resting, re-organizing her stuff, and cleaning all of my tack which was sadly overdue for a cleaning. It will live at my apartment now until just before I move when I’ll move it into the new barn.

On Sunday I had planned to head out in the morning but I had a busy day planned already, so a small window to head out to the barn, and then woke up with a really sore and swollen finger which I quickly realized was infected. Bf and I headed to urgent care where I got instructions and some antibiotics and headed home. At that point it was too late to go to the barn so we did our other scheduled things and then I headed out to the barn around 4:00.

It was quickly apparent to me that I’d absolutely made the right decision in moving her closer. The drive felt easy and quick and I wasn’t already tired out by the time I got to the barn. Katai actually seemed pretty settled which I was really happy to see. She’d also been eating her grain foods and since they’re literally only vitamins they don’t taste amazing so sometimes if she’s stressed she won’t eat them. I groomed her really well and scratched all her itchy places. She was very happy to have me and sort of clingy so I spent quite a bit of time with her. Once she was all clean I put her fly mask back on, put her fly sheet on, fly lotion everywhere, and put her fly boots on so she was all armored up against the bugs. I left for a minute to put the stuff back in my car and when I walked back to say goodbye she gave me this sad little whinny that broke my heart. I’m so looking forward to having her so close and it will be great to use this quarantine time for bonding even if all I want right now is to ride my pony!

Enforced Down Time

Well, after posting “all” of those posts there were even more life changes and a timeline that changed slightly so things have been really busy again away from the barn.

 Katai is still doing well but I’ve been maybe seeing her 1-2 times per week at this point. As July was coming to a close I decided that for a few reasons, during the month of August I was going to just coast and only go to the barn if I felt like it and/or to make sure she has everything she needs. Luckily with full care board at an amazing facility that’s ok and while I still feel guilty about it I don’t feel as guilty as I thought I might. I think I really needed this “vacation” from riding. It’s been something I’ve put my whole heart into for the past 5 years or so without really significant breaks so this has been nice and refreshing.

 Also, since Katai will be in quarantine for the second half of the month and I’ll be unable to ride or work her it seemed silly to try to get her back in shape for two weeks only to have her lose that conditioning while she’s standing around for two weeks. As of now Katai is at the new barn and in quarantine but that’s for a different post.

 The life changes are really exciting however :) As I mentioned previously other things were in the works to help with the overwhelmed feeling. One was moving Katai closer, another that happened to come up was the work change/promotion that significantly reduced my stress, the third is that my bf and I were starting to talk about moving in.

Tiny sleepy fox puppy

Initially it was going to occur next spring to coincide with the end of the lease I signed but the more we talked about it the more we felt that actually moving before winter was ideally the way to go. We moved up our plans to look at apartments while keeping in the back of our mind that we may still need to wait until next spring. We looked at a couple of meh places and then we saw two that we really liked that checked all of the boxes. After some debate we ended up with a favorite and went ahead and signed the lease to start moving in September!!

My bf will have until the end of October to move and I’m working to finalize a sub leaser who will likely want to move in mid-September. Talk about stressful with moving myself and pony twice this year! However, both moves are going to significantly reduce my bf and my stress and open up a bunch of time that we haven’t had which is much needed. I’m also just so thrilled and excited to move in with this amazing person I love.

Vegan tacos!!!!

At any rate moving for me will likely occur during the first week of September right as Katai gets out of quarantine. To help I did take the full week off instead of just Labor day so hopefully that allows me time for both getting Katai back into work and for moving. I will post a brief update of the move to the barn and I’m hoping to do a mini barn tour this week. Otherwise the blog will likely be pretty quiet until all of the moving is completed. Hopefully at that point I’ll be refreshed and rested from pony stuff and ready to start this blog back up in ernest!

All The Changes - Mindset

This is less a post about mindset and more of a post just listing some of the really positive things going on in my life right now since so many of my recent posts have been pretty overwhelmingly negative.

The BF

Not too surprisingly he's one of the shining beacons in my life right now. Being with him is everything I hoped a relationship would be (both the amazing and the tough) and more. He's supportive while also pushing me to be the best version of myself and he appreciates when I do the same for him as well.

Stopped at a light today I took this picture
of the place where we had our third date <3

New Barn

Not necessarily excited about the move but I am so, so, so excited to be closer which will help improve my motivation, and therefore how often I make it out there, and therefore how positive I feel about life :)

The Puppy

I've always loved and always will love Veggie but there's just something different about Moshy who's my little puppy soulmate. She is everything that I've ever wanted in a pet. She's just chill about everything and very calm, dainty, and sweet in a way that none of my other pets have been. I am all about rescuing animals and all of my other animals have always been rescues and I will absolutely rescue again but picking out the exact puppy, and breed I wanted means that she is just perfect for me.

Cleaning her tiny paws

 Media

I've still been watching through the Robert Dover clinics for tidbits to work on but in addition I discovered Oliva Tower's Dressage Youtube Channel. She's humble, funny, down to earth, and shares both the good and bad. She struggles/struggled with mindset so it's really enjoyable and motivating to watch her work to improve. I highly recommend all of her videos but the two below are some of my favorites.

Work Right Now

Work certainly wasn't one of the things on this list for a long time but thanks to an amazing manager who honestly asked for my feedback which gave my the ability to share how I was feeling some changes have been made which resulted in a promotion for me as well as a change in workflow. That has removed one of the most repetitive parts of my job and freed up time for me and my coworkers to actually get all of our work done and work on improving projects vs. just constantly struggling to keep our heads above water.

She also really heard me on not wanting to travel as much with some of the stuff I have going on in my life right now which means I haven't traveled since early this year which has been a nice break. I enjoy the travel and am looking forward to getting out to WA again but it's been really nice having a quieter year this year.

All The Changes - New Barn

We are finally getting nice summer weather!

This is going to be one of a series of catch up posts that I’ve written already and will post over the next week or so. Previously I’d been working on multiple updates but by the time I got back to working on the drafts they were always out of date. This way that won’t happen!

Where to start. I think where I automatically want to start is by explaining why I’m moving again since I’m embarrassed by the number of barns I’ve been at. However, every move has been for a good reason and I haven’t burned any bridges or had issues at any of the barns, I’ve just had really good, really different reasons for leaving each time and most of those were because of non-horse life changes that caused a ripple effect.

As mentioned in my last post the main reasons for this move were cost and location. These wouldn’t have been factors if it hadn’t been for all of the other things I have going on in my life right now and, while some of them I maybe could have planned for better, for the most part it took me being at my current barn to decide that it wasn’t going to work out.

The puppies playing/cuddling for T.
I'll have to do a whole post on them at some point :)

Cost and location are pretty clear reasons for a move, however, in addition there is also the fact that while moving to a barn that trailered to shows sounded ideal in practice it’s not necessarily working out for where Katai and I are right now. For one thing they only trailer to a very limited (3-4) number of rated shows per year. No schooling shows, and all of these are out of town, and require a full weekend and a hotel. That is not only costly but tough to make my current schedule align. Plus, right now I really need at least a few schooling shows to help Katai build confidence in being off property at that type of environment. I know, I know, beggars can’t be choosers but based on the shows they selected this year I haven’t been able to attend even one show and I’m concerned about my ability to next year as well. Since that was one of the primary reasons I moved here it was one of the things that caused me to re-evaluate.

When I did decide to re-evaluate I went back to the options I had listed prior to moving to this barn which were:

-Moving to an expensive show type barn that trailers to shows where I don’t need a trailer

-Moving to a cheaper, more bare bones barn that met my basic requirements where I could save some money and hopefully afford a trailer, and therefore more flexibility, in the future.

I tried the first and the only other options for barns like this would cost approx. $1000-$2600 per month (or even $3200 if I wanted them to groom and tack up Katai for me [which I very much do not just so we’re clear]) which is money I certainly don’t have. Plus, in those cases I’d likely be facing very similar problems to what I am right now except that they would be closer to my current location. 

The fairy princess looking like a princess

The second was tough mainly because the barns that I was looking at were very bare bones and were either just pasture board with no supplements fed which would be really tough, really far away which would be tough, or were so bare bones that they didn’t even have an indoor which basically would mean not riding for 4-5 months out of the year in MN.

I sat on this for a long time and had started contacting barns for tours since I knew that would help me make the decision. However, in the meantime I sent a completely unrelated message to a local dressage rider on Instagram commenting on a story she had posted about the gorgeous new rose gold OneK that I’ve been coveting. She actually responded and then I randomly asked her where she boarded since I didn’t recognize the location from the pictures. It turns out that she is the dressage trainer at a unadvertised local barn that met pretty much all of the requirements. Even better she sent me the contact info for the barn manager and when I wrote to the BM I found out that while they almost never have openings they happened to have a couple and were interviewing people that week. I managed to fit in an appointment and for the first time ever interviewed to get into a barn. 

and not looking quite as much like a fairy princess

It felt pretty intense especially since she gave me an idea of the “competition” I was up against but luckily it was determined that Katai and I would fit in well and so we got a spot for move in around mid-August.

This barn is much more in line with Jane’s on a sliding scale of small bare bones barns to fancy huge show barns which is perfect because Jane’s is still my favorite place I’ve boarded at. I may have even gone back to Jane’s except, something I never mentioned is that, it was for sale and sold shortly after I moved out. However, one big improvement is that this barn has two outdoor arenas and trails right on the property. Right down the road there are also additional trails and it’s pretty close to another dressage barn that also has a dressage instructor (because options are nice). There is a dressage instructor/trainer on site as well who I’m hoping to work with (the person I messaged) and I think that she and I will get along just based on following her Instagram for awhile J

Proof that sometimes we have a string of good days :)

There are other dressage people that board there who go to a decent number of local, rated shows and I know that the trainer is willing to haul so fingers crossed this will work out to be the best of both worlds. The indoor is quite small and not heated and the barn is also not heated which is going to be the worst part of the move but with how much closer it is and the other amenities I think it will balance out.

Overall I’d say I’m optimistic about the new barn. I’m not excited about it only because I’m dreading another move and the upheaval it causes and I’m wanting some stability in my life since I’m really over the gypsy lifestyle at this point. However, I’m already feeling motivated to work with Katai when I have a 25 minute drive vs. a 50 minute drive to the barn. I’m also excited about being able to work with another dressage instructor since I learn so much from each person I work with.

Exacerbated (long post feel free to skip)

While I know I haven’t done a good job of updating this blog this year I have still been reading all of the blogs I subscribe to. Reading a couple of posts recently made me want to post an update on what is going on more from my riding perspective and mind set than just a general update so here goes.

 I am, along with at least one other blogger, currently struggling with the move up to second level and really have been since last fall. At first it was because I was getting a lot of attitude from Katai as she also struggled with the new expectations but then it became more because we were consistently derailed. First by saddle fit, then ulcers, then SAD, then more saddle fit issues, then my anxiety, then a new boyfriend, then a new puppy, then the weather, then a barn move, then a longer drive, then more expensive lessons, then the weather again…

This weather? Making riding difficult? No that can't be...

 Yeah, so while I’m certainly struggling with moving to 2nd level that’s been exacerbated by all of the other things going on in my life. It is a two way street though and while I’ve shared a lot about all of the other things there is certainly a component of the barn and riding no longer feeling entirely like my happy place, at least not to the extent that it did. The question then is whether I’m going to let myself continue to be derailed and just not focus on riding as much as I have been or completely let the blog go but I don’t want to do either of those things and honestly my life wouldn’t be complete without horses and working toward some sort of riding accomplishments.

Delicious blueberry, spinach smoothies are one way
to make the high heat and humidity tolerable

 So what am I doing to fix it?

 When I stepped back and analyzed why I was really struggling a couple months ago I found that I’ve added the following:
An additional commute in the morning of 10-15 minutes
An additional commute in the evening of 20-50 minutes
An additional commute to the barn each way of at least 20 minutes
Additional time spent walking puppies (I used to be able to let Veggie out in the backyard) of 10-15 minutes 3-4 times per day
Additional time with my bf

 If you completely cut out the time with my bf that’s an additional hour – hour and 45 minutes for days I don’t go to the barn and an additional hour and 40 minutes to 2 hours and 15 minutes on days when I do go to the barn from how my schedule used to be. When you add in time with bf at home and time with bf doing events that pull me away from home that’s a considerable change from my previously quiet (but also lonely :) schedule.

Lots of days like this with huge thunderheads as our weather wildly swings

Having laid that out I feel less guilty for not being able to get to the barn as much or guilty for our lack of progress. Then when I look at budget as well and that is also tight. Moving into the new apartment, needing to pay for parking every day, boarding at a more expensive barn without lessons included, a new puppy, a new (used) car, needing/wanting to go out on dates with my bf… All of these things were items that I took into account but it still feels tighter than I want which is annoying. The tighter budget means fewer lessons and less ability to do shows and/or clinics.

 With looking at the above there are a lot of things that I can’t control but there are a couple of things that I can control and one of those is the barn where I’m boarding Katai. So yep, you guessed it, I’m moving again. The new barn is cheaper by a good bit, and much closer. I’ll easily save 30-50 minutes each time I go to the barn between the shorter drive and the setup of the barn. I found it through my horse network since, like Jane’s place, it doesn’t have any online presence. I’ll do a post specifically about the barn soon, I’m getting so good at them at this point..

One of the busy weekends spent up north with my bf and his family

I have a couple of other ideas as well to help take some pressure off and bf is amazing as always since after I figured this out we had a long positive and supportive conversation about doing a food prep and chores day together. That way we could both get stuff ready together for our busy weeks since not having food to eat has been one of the huge stressors I’ve been dealing with. We’ve also talked about leaving more weekends open so that we can just veg and hang out together or do our own thing (riding for me and climbing for him) vs. always having stuff scheduled.

 I really like this guy.

 There are a couple of other plans in the works to help with reducing my scheduled time but right now they’re just in the beginning stages so nothing I’m comfortable sharing yet. It is making me feel like there is a light at the end of the tunnel though. Work has also gotten better in the last couple of weeks thanks to a shift in how our department workflows function and because we added some additional staff. I’m also receiving a promotion which is fantastic :) That all means that my stress should be far lower when I get home which will make for less need to veg and more ability to do the things I want to do.

Another busy weekend spent in NC with my bf for one of his friend's wedding

 As far as what I’m doing to help with my riding?

 I love my current trainer. She’s an amazing person and the tools she gave me to help with Katai’s ground work have made a significant difference. As long as I keep doing my homework I’m confident that next time I show I’ll have a much easier time getting through to Katai which was exactly what I hoped to gain from her. However, she has seemed to me to be uncomfortable helping me get to 2nd level and has encouraged me to clinic vs. taking dressage lessons with her. I truly appreciate her honesty, and, it’s then tough to feel like it makes sense to invest in many lessons with her.

At the new barn there is a dressage instructor that I follow on social media and who is riding at least a couple levels above me. In addition, there is another, locally well known, dressage instructor nearby who has a history of bringing riders up the levels. At this point I’m still comfortable mainly going it alone for a while both to help with my current level of burnout (weekly lessons just aren’t a thing I can do right now) and because we still really need to build strength more than anything else. However, being able to take a lesson a month or as needed to ensure we’re headed in the right directly would be amazing.

 Of course it’s also going to be extremely helpful to be so much closer to the barn. That will help reduce my burnout, increase my motivation to go, and make it easier to get there even when I have more limited time. More than anything I need to get back into a 5 day routine since Katai is not doing well on the 2-3 days a week that I’ve been managing for the past couple of crazy months. So, I finally feel like I have at least the beginning of a plan in place.

Hopefully the reduction in stress and increase in available time will mean I can increase my blogging as well but my first goal is to get my riding back to where it needs to be and then hopefully the blogging will follow!

A Fun Sunday

Not that I don't always have a fun time on the weekend but today was sort of a nice, horse filled, day of doing just the things I wanted to do since my bf was doing the thing he loves (cars) all day.

Picture from my last ride, today I rode outside!

First off, I got Moshy mainly so that I could have a dog that could go do things with me. I adore Veggie but he just wasn't socialized well enough so while I can do the things I need to do with him it certainly isn't fun or always safe to bring him places and the barn tops the list of places he shouldn't go. With Moshy I not only chose a breed that I knew could be a fairly decent barn dog but I've also worked with her a ton to socialize her to all the things she'll see at a barn. The toughest has been horses since I got her during a really long cold winter and she was just too tiny to spend much time at the barn.

While she's really well socialized I've been a bit nervous to bring her back to the barn since if she wasn't good with the horses it would be tough to manage her there without just bringing her back home and with the drive out 50+ minutes it wouldn't be nice to have to just turn around and bring her home.

Then yesterday I got an invite from H to go watch her ride at a really nice local show that was close to my house. Right away I thought of bringing Moshy with me but I knew it wasn't the best idea to test how well she'd do around horses there for the first time in a few months so I decided to start at my barn. I knew it would be quiet since most Sunday mornings there are a lot of people at church or sleeping in and I went for it.

Long story short, it went really well! I walked her a bit around the parking area and then carried her over towards the fence of a pasture with two quiet horses in it. I didn't get too close and she barked a couple times but they weren't spooked and when I gently scolded her she gave it up and just watched, interested to see what they would do. I eventually worked my way up to the fence and she was still calm and quiet. After that she never barked again! I walked her all over, introduced her to the old mostly blind barn dog, held her near the cross ties while a friend was grooming their horse and carried her while I walked Katai back to the pasture after my ride.

During my ride she hung out in her carrier in my car with all the windows open (it was in the low 70s and overcast so she stayed nice and cool) and I'm pretty sure she just slept. If I do this often I may get a plastic crate to keep in the back of my car just so that she has a nice secure place to stay while I ride if needed. If it's warm, I could put her in the air conditioned lounge instead. She was just so, so good and it felt so validating after all the work I've done.

My ride was pretty decent as well. Katai had her mare panties in a bundle and didn't want to pony appropriately but she let me help her loosen up and then we got some decent work and some of the best shallow serpentines at the canter that we've done where she really sat back and carried vs. just running. More on how we got there in a different post though!

After Katai was put away I stuck around and let Moshy run around a bit more and talked to friends. I didn't want to go home for an hour or two and then leave for the show but I also didn't want to get there too early. Eventually we left for the 1+ hour drive to the show grounds. I stopped for lunch, gas, and coffee along the way and Moshy mostly napped or watched me drive.

Once we got to the show grounds I crossed my fingers that she would remember and not bark and she came through! I carried her at first and we found the barn with H in it. She thought Moshy was adorable, as did many other people who stopped me to meet her, and gave her some pets while she was getting ready. We got there about an hour early so we had a chance to chat and for Moshy to meet a few dogs which she was a total lady about.

Eventually H was ready and we headed out to the arena to watch. Moshy made more friends and then sat quietly on my lap in the bleachers watching H put down a really good test that she ended up winning a blue for. After that we chatted a bit more and then I headed home with a nice sleepy puppy who immediately got a bath since her mop self had picked up most of the nasty things on the barn floor at that point.

I had so much fun and it was so nice to have a well behaved companion that I didn't need to worry about come with me and do all the things. I'm planning to make bringing her to the barn a regular thing!

So sleepy

All The Learning

Puppy princess is feeling much better after her spay. She is looking so grown up!

When I decided to move to this barn, which meant no more weekly lessons, I certainly never intended to stop taking advantage of learning opportunities. It was just that I didn't want to continue to do lessons each week every week. That was coming both from a budget perspective and because after all these years of weekly lessons (mostly not riding) I'm just tired of having a weekly commitment every week. On top of that, I learned so much from Jane and then with the winter we had we took a big step back so much of what I'm working on right now is getting her back to where we were.

Of course I booked a couple lessons with S2 right away when I moved and when we decided at the second lesson that I wouldn't be going to the show at the end of May I moved my show budget to lessons and booked three more right away instead. That makes for 5 lessons with S2 in May and 4 of those were within a week. During one of those lessons she told me that Kristi Wysocki was going to be at the barn teaching a clinic and that she'd encourage me to ride with her.

My tack closet at home continues to get more packed.
I can't wait until I can move into a tack locker at the barn!

I'd taken a fair amount of time off work so I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get the time off I needed for the clinic but in the end I was able to leave a bit early and do a late ride and while it was a little tight it all ended up working out. I truly wish I had clinic media but unfortunately there wasn't anyone there taking pictures and in the rush to change into barn clothes I left my phone in my car and just didn't think to see if someone could get any media.

I had been warned that Kristi could be blunt but I do really well with blunt. I like people who tell it like it is even if it's brutal. It's just the way I learn best. However, I never even saw that side of Kristi because she liked both of us and actually had very little feedback about the things we got to during that lesson. Part of that was because Katai was busy being the spookiest pony she's been in a REALLY long time with the sound system on in the arena so Kristi spent too much time helping me work through the spooks and even feeding Katai sugar :)

However, we still did get a lot of riding done including lots of trot, leg yields, canter-trot transitions, half halts work, a bit of work on my position and posting, and on generally slowing down the walk and trot after the canter. I got complements on our leg yields (totally Jane's doing) as well as my geometry which was AWESOME to hear coming from a judge especially since it's going to take good geometry to score really well on an average moving pony.

Off topic but this is maybe Katai's 10 ride ever :)

In all honesty she had very little to say. She wanted me to keep my elbows closer to my sides (yeah I flap when I'm concentrating on things haha), and to pause more at the top of my posting. I also got a couple reminders to look up. When we went to canter it fell a bit more off the rails (other than the spooking which was already solidly off the rails) because once Katai is asked to canter she thinks only canter is a thing. She helped me just slowly work through it but there wasn't anything groundbreaking. Just good solid, patient, riding.

In the end I'm really glad I rode with her and I got some really good feedback but I continue to go back to how incredible Jane is and she charges less than a 7th of that lesson for an hour vs. 45 minutes.

At this point I'm going to take a longer break from lessons. If anything, the lack of anything really ground breaking from that lesson (which again was at least partially caused by Katai's spookiness) really makes me want to continue to push through the things I know we need to work on more before I pay for more lessons. Between the things I learned from Kristi and the things I learned from S2 I have some additional items to work on as well as all of the work that Jane instilled in me so I'm really confident that we can get a ways now ourselves and then hopefully get S2 involved again as we get a bit closer to my next potential show!