One of the habits I’ve built for my new self is keeping my nails painted. “Gee Lauren, that’s so shocking and revolutionary… why on earth are you telling me this?” you are probably thinking. The short answer is, I am stalling so I can tell you about more exciting things in the next few weeks. The longer answer is the following blog post, because I feel compelled to write about something. For most of my life, I’ve made a horrible (insert…
My ego with riding continues to be bruised, but I’m not a quitter. I’m officially doing the schooling show next weekend instead of the originally planned two day show this weekend. Bonus points for saving a lot of money? That’s how I’m pitching it to myself. I also got bumped from the jumper lesson (hopefully temporarily) this weekend, since the more experienced girls needed to prep over bigger fences for the show this weekend. I mean even if I’ve been riding…
I’m dealing with a lot of mental shenanigans with my riding lately. The good news is, I feel like I’m winning the war. The bad news… well, there are lots of battles in a war! Due to a scheduling snafu (if you call someone changing show dates after they publish the ‘official’ list on their FB page a snafu… grrr), I’m showing much earlier than I planned to in May. I’m also going to have to show straight in the 2’6″…
I’ve had several lessons and good rides since ‘the incident‘, but even so nothing has felt quite normal. Either I’ve been worried or Simon has seem worried (most likely because I am). I’ve been riding defensively and either going too fast, too slow, leaning or getting left behind. Nothing tragic has happened, but nothing has really felt good either. The derby ended up getting entirely cancelled due to rain, which I have mixed feelings about. However after my lesson on…
I walked to the barn for my lesson last night with my positivity hat on. I also immediately walked to a lovely group of barn ladies enjoying Sangria, and I had a glass. I figured Sangria could only help our situation. (P.S. I have no media so enjoy these random faces of Simon while I tried to take a picture of his new bonnet I made) Simon brought his A-game too. He actually trotted up to me in the pasture, which…
I haven’t written about my rides much lately for several reasons. At first, they were super bad. Simon was protesting the inconsistent riding and lack of jumping in the best ways he knows how – being super anxious and rushing through everything. No listening to my seat. No softening at the bit. The wonderful flatwork we had worked so hard to get last fall disappeared, so I got super down about it. Obviously he has ulcers. Needs a chiro visit….
When my husband took riding lesson (oh so briefly), he got very frustrated that riding wasn’t a linear progression sport. I basically said “duh!” and expressed that it’s often one step forward two steps back… or at least feels that way. Yet, I forgot my own advice recently. This winter has been rough on us for riding consistency. Not many barns in Texas have an indoor, and that includes us. We’ve had tons of rain lately, and I’ve been lucky…
After I graduated from college, I was riding at a nice barn with a great trainer. Most of the clients did A shows, and the ones who didn’t did C shows. Basically, not a whole lot were in the schooling show circuit I had been doing for years… and I wanted to move up. To make a long story (I’m sure I’ll blog about it later) short, I got a fancy project horse and semi-retired my trusty gelding. Beckett, a…