The Repurposed Horse

Thanks to the TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR that has existed in Missouri pretty much all week, at 10:06 pm tonight I received an email saying that the show tomorrow has been cancelled due to the weather. AFTER I ALREADY FOUND THE PERFECT MATCHY OUTFIT So. No Rolex, no show, lame horse, endless rain/flood/mud. Isn't life just great sometimes? 😑

There are some horse-care-related things that I feel confident about claiming to be good at.  Example: grooming.  There are some things that I am passable at, like standing wraps.  There are some things that I still don't know how to do, like clipping.  And there are some things that I am very, very bad at.   pictured: a duct tape boot that fell off within 5 minutes of Leo walking on it Making a boot out of vet wrap and tape is one of the things that falls solidly into the category of things I am bad at.  Thankfully, Assistant Trainers A and L are very, very good at this, and have been helping me out over the last few days.  Leo's foot has been in excellent hands. Soaking for days Although normally a dick in the wash rack, the epsom salt soaks seem to be an exception to this.  He'll stand completely still for the entire 15 minutes, and probably would continue to stand for even longer if I needed him to.  There was a pony party on...

Remember that one time that I said I was going to go to Rolex?  And I was so excited because every other year, something has always come up?  Well, life happened (as it does), and Rolex has sadly been taken off the table.  😭 Adulting is stupid, guys. (Edited to add that non-horse-related things have come up that are preventing me from going to Rolex) but my horse is still cute Leo has been doing well.  On Monday, we had a tough-but-awesome lesson in which Trainer K brought back the 'no inside rein' exercise.  I feel like I've blogged about this exercise before, but I can't find the post at the moment...anyways, the idea is that you unbuckle your reins and cross the inside rein under the horse's neck so that both reins are on the outside, and then you ride with mostly leg and outside rein.  It's hard, and we got stuck going in circles a few times towards the end, but overall it was a successful lesson, and on Tuesday I rode him again with my reins lik...

Over at Bel Joeor , there's a pretty neat blog hop just getting started.  April is, apparently, National Poetry Month, and this blog hop follows that theme. What's your favorite poem about horses? If you don't have a favorite, do some Googling and find one you like! Song lyrics count, too. Mine is a song by Mike Oldfield, called "On Horseback."  It's a little long, but it makes me happy, and has since I was a little kid.  My parents and their friends used to do a huge NYE party each year, where they all performed songs by their favorite artists (most of them are extremely talented musicians), and this one has always stuck with me.  I think that I sang on it as part of the chorus the year that their friend J performed it.  The lyrics are as follows; they have been copied from this website .  I like beer, and I like cheese I like the smell of a westerly breeze But what I like more than all of these Is to be on horseback. Hey and away we ...

Hello!  After several quiet weeks of not many Leo-related things happening, I am happy to announce that Things have Happened!  And I have media for some of it! Last Friday, Leo got a rather impromptu ride from a visiting trainer (A).  She had seen him at the William Woods show  and wanted to try him out for herself (so I guess that he must have impressed somebody with his..enthusiastic..performance).  She spent roughly 20 minutes on him and had him flexing and bending and looking like an actual dressage prospect (!!!) and it was super impressive and made me so, so proud of my crazy horse.  Unfortunately, I was so busy standing around being impressed that I forgot to take any pictures/video, but he looked so good!  Then she had me get on him because he was In the Zone and she wanted to watch me ride him.  Although I don't think that I ever quite got him to collect as nicely as she did, we had some pretty lovely moments.  She emphasized think...

I've wanted to go to Rolex since forever. Like, I have distinct memories of 19-year-old me dying of jealousy when finding out that my horse college friends were road tripping out together, and not being able to join them. Every year, I've tried to make Rolex happen, and every year the timing basically is just impossible to work out. So when one of my friends (who will remained unnamed because reasons) started suggesting a few days ago that I try to make the trip to Kentucky this year, my initial reaction was "no way." But I thought about it. And thought some more. I get one 4-day weekend off work a month, and the bf and I had been talking about using April's time off to take a road trip...And Kentucky isn't really all that far from Missouri...So I sent B a text asking him how he feels about Kentucky. To make a long story short, once B started looking in to all the fun things that apparently exist on the drive from Missouri to Kentucky and back, ...

Mud. My life this week is mud.  They actually do have grass, it's just not visible in this picture Missouri has been in a drought for a while, and this week has provided some much-needed rain...Which means that my barn life is now covered in mud. It's everywhere My horse is also covered in mud. His flashy white legs are now brown, and then I groom them and then he goes back out and somehow they're worse the next day. Of course, since we actually really *need* this rain, we're all trying not to complain too much.  Snacks? And the ponies, naturally, are enjoying it to the fullest! How's the weather where you are?