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…
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…
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.
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…
Okay I’m a few months early here, but there’s a lot going on and I needed a pick-me-up. Since there’s two work days between us working folks and Friday afternoon – I figured y’all might need a pick-me-up too. There are tons of videos like this on Youtube, but these three got me all misty eyed, warm and fuzzy. I love these little girls. I love how happy and grateful they are, and I love that I still feel that…
Even though I’ve actually shown a lot in my life, since 2008 s I’ve been to a grand total of three shows and all of those were in the past 12 months. Even though I thought I had conquered my show nerves in the past, they have returned with a vengeance. I know this is something a lot of riders struggle with. For me, it’s all about mixing exposure and attitude. Go to a lot of shows. Go to a…