This confession may shock you, because in my normal life I’m kind of like a raccoon. Anything small and sparkly I pretty much get googly eyed over and need it – now. That being said, I hate bling in the hunters. If I ever do the jumpers that shit is going to be on like donkey kong, but in the hunters? No. What, you say? “Sparkle in the hunters, but that’s illegal!” It is, but people sneak it in. This probably isn’t a…
Yay! I get to announce the 5 lucky winners of the Equine Aid Giveaway! None of you are going to have any thirsty horses anymore thanks to Equine Aid. 🙂 Congrats to Karen, Britt, Renate, Andrea and L. Williams! I’ve contacted you via email for addresses for shipping 🙂 Thank you to all entries, and remember to check out Equine Aid if you have a fussy horse that doesn’t like to drink enough!
There are good lessons because your horse is fantastic, and then there are bad lessons because your horse is not fantastic. I didn’t have either of those lessons last night. I had the lesson where your horse is mostly game for what we’re trying to do, but the rider is not making his job easy. By not making it easy, I really mean thumping on his back while trying to step up to bigger jumps. Here’s a dramatic visual to…
Things have been a little repetitive in the horse world lately. After the high that was my most successful show ever it’s been a little hum drum. Go to barn. Groom horse. Hack horse. No stirrups. Two point. Transitions. Pet horse. Hose horse. Treat horse. Put horse away. Don’t get me wrong, ho hum is quite alright. It means nobody is lame, broken or maimed in any way. It means the trainer is doing her job, the horse is happy,…
Thanks for all the kind words to my ‘meh’ post yesterday. I read all of them as always, and you guys gave me some good clarity to the situation 🙂 Also for those who were wondering, Pascale puppy is fine this morning. They don’t know why she was sick, but moral of the story is don’t go to that emergency vet again because every time I step through the door they convince me my dog is on death’s door. I…
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit down in the dumps this past week or so. The new puppy was a bright spot for sure, but now she’s sick and I’m worried and mopey about it this morning. A friend also has really sad news about their animal, and all in all I just want animals to stop getting sick or trying to kill themselves in a variety of unusual and expensive ways. Is that too much…
We all have certain horse shows that we admire and wish we could compete at. Some of them seem more attainable than others, and this week for the Hunter Princess Blog Hop I’m asking what shows would you want to do if you had a nice enough horse, all the vacation time you needed and a big budget for traveling and coaching fees. For me, there are two “bucket list” shows that I would love love love to show at one…
Sometimes you go to the barn to hack your horse. Sometimes you go to the barn to mostly ignore your horse because a sweet adorable little puppy has captured your heart. This is a story about the later. I don’t know the full story, but someone dropped an approx eight-week-old female lab mix puppy at our barn this week. When my trainer put the pictures of her on Facebook, I kind of melted. Okay, I seriously melted. I also shamelessly…
No matter what kind of camera you have or what it’s set to, arguably the most important aspect of equine photography is timing. Perfect exposure and clarity doesn’t mean anything if you catch the horse looking like a donkey when they are really a 10 mover… and that does happen! Timing is everything. Those of you with DSLR cameras are going to have an easier time with this one. That’s because the lag between when you click the button to…
After four beautiful rounds of jumping this past weekend, my trainer informed me that I needed to do the under saddle classes as well. Simon and I hate flatting. People say that it’s the race horse in him, but he never really raced and the truth is he’s almost as bad schooling at home as he is in the ring. I just don’t think he’s quite figured out what under saddle classes are all about.
First, I want to thank everyone who commented on the blog, instagram, or Facebook about our success at the show. It really means a lot to me that we have so much support from all of you readers! I’m very lucky. The second thing I wanted to tell you about is a new product that was sent to me for testing, Equine Aid. What is Equine Aid? In short, a powder added to your horses’ water bucket to encourage drinking….
My goal for this show was to have a calmer Simon (and a calmer me!) throughout the entire experience, and I am thrilled to say that we blew past that goal and ended up reserve champion in the 2’3″ Equitation! Wut wut! That’s the high level overview. If you want to skip the rest of the words of this post and just look at pretty pictures, that’s totally fine by me 🙂 We’ll start with schooling on Friday. I headed over…