Alilson at Pony’Tude had a great post the other day when she posted a series of equitation photos showing her progress as a rider. Even in the early “bad” shots, I was pretty impressed. See, riding did not come naturally to me. I figured that because I read every horse book known to mankind by age nine, I would just be a natural. I thought I would speak horse! I thought I was destined to win blue ribbons at my very first…
I still have so much to sift through right now, and I’m overwhelmed. I am dangling some carrots for me to get me through this rough time, but I won’t be ready to blog about my ideas until I know where my feet are more. However, there is a bright spot that still shines and that is my Simon. Each year I like to compare two similar photos from the previous years. You can see year one and year two…
Sometimes when you’re in the middle of a tough journey with your horse, it’s hard to see the big picture. Even though I don’t feel stuck at all right now with Simon (rather, I feel pretty flippin’ fantastic but that makes for boring content) I still thought it might be a good time to step back and look through the archives. Below I’ve chosen one photo from every show since I got him. They start in October 2012 and go…
Once upon a time I had a green horse. Rides were somewhat unpredictable, and some lessons I could do my best and things would still kinda suck overall because he was green. Then I took weekly (or twice weekly) lessons for two years. I added a weekly training ride. We went to shows with the only goal being “get around”. We did more stuff at home on our non-lesson days. Slowly it started coming together. Simon has always been a…
I’ve been trying to push our flatwork up to the next level for a few reasons. First, let me give you a brief synopsis of how I usually hack my horse. Wow you’re lazy today. Well, lazy means I’m not getting run away with! I can do lazy… I’ll call it “long and low”. Well we’ve done a few laps now, I should do circles or leg yields or something. That was moderately successful. Those hard hard. Let’s canter! Two…
Last year, I did a post showing how Simon evolved in the first year I owned him. Since this July marks two years since I’ve had the creature, I figured I’d do another before and after type post. Again, we’ve had our ups and downs but I feel more strongly than ever that this horse is the perfect match for me right now. I just hope he stays sound and we can enjoy many more years together. We may be…
I am the first person to admit that I’m a bit of a conformation idiot. I can tell if a horse is shaped like a donkey (and is in fact, a horse… not a donkey) but that’s about as far as it goes. So when I looked at these two comparison pictures, I was kind of like “WAH HE LOOKS THE SAME. No proof of hard work.” Therefore, I whined to Jen. Jen is not a conformation idiot, and said she…
Technically I should have written this post at the beginning of July, because July 2012 is when I officially became Simon’s owner. I’m a few weeks late, but I wanted to show some transformation pictures to show y’all how far we’ve come. He went from being the scraggly horse that not many people thought was worth much, to a solid citizen with a job and some small success (that I’m sure will grow!). The biggest surprise to me is that…