Saturday night I drank one glass of wine, had bread and cheese and about 5 bites of sorbet before I passed out at 10:30pm. A good night’s sleep helps a lot, and I drove to the show early Sunday morning determined to have a better attitude. Of course, that better attitude didn’t include being nervous for my first ever medal class. The 2’6″ Medal runs first thing with no warm-up. I could have gotten up super early to school the fences…
I know my instagram was suspiciously quiet over the weekend and I’m sure lots of folks are looking for a show update. I’ll write one post for each day, but if you are looking for the overall synopsis here goes: I came into this show with a lot of hope (read: unrealistic expectations) and I’m a very passionate person (read: extremely competitive). My horse and I stepped up a division and went from doing the adds to doing the strides, and there…
More than anything, my way to get ready for a show is methodical planning over a series of days so I don’t feel like too rushed the night before. Me feeling rushed is a sure fire way for my show nerves to take over, and I really do a lot of work to keep those bad boys away. Monday was quite the stormy day here in Austin, so I sewed new snaps on a show shirt in order to revive…
First off, thanks everyone to your kind words about my little freak out post yesterday. I am feeling better about the situation, but still not great. Trying to tell myself that just because my dogs no longer fit into the family model they used to, they can still be happy and healthy creatures for the rest of their lives. Not there yet, but getting there. Today I am genuinely curious about a topic I love – braiding. Specifically hunter braids,…
Even though I decided to cancel my plans to show in March, I’m a horse show addict and I usually can’t stay away. I headed out early to watch our hunters go, planning to ride Simon during lunch before the jumpers and then come back to the horse show to watch and photograph the jumpers in the afternoon. Of course, we know how horse show schedules go and I ended up staying all day and getting properly sunburnt. The morning…
I’ve seen different posts on blogs throughout the past year where people had a negative experience with IHSA, which is the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association. Reading those posts always made me a little sad, because I absolutely would not be the rider I am today without participating in this program. Instead of being bummed, I decided to write about it… and here we are at today’s post. Disclaimer: I’m writing from my personal experiences only, and I stopped riding IHSA…
I kept a bit quiet about it beforehand, but Simon and I went adventuring to a small hunter/jumper schooling show with Jen and Paddington Bear this past Saturday. I’ll be 100% honest and partially wanted to go because I figured it would be a small show and we could win pretty ribbons. Yup, I’m vain and shallow at times… sue me! 🙂 Because I had this thought there ended up being tons of kiddos in our division, go figure! Of…
When 2013 started out, I was planning on showing my lovely creature as much as possible. I wanted to get a lot of miles on Simon and hopefully mold him into my good little show horse. Then he was lame for four months, and all my hopes were dashed. At the beginning of his rehab we switched barns, and I was just happy to be riding again. Needless to say, the fact that we got our shit together enough to…