2014 Year End Review

Well its been two years on the old blog front. And its definitely time to do some reviewing of last years business. 2013 can be found here!

January

It was pretty cold and miserable. I hopped on Jellybean for one of the first times without Robert’s help. We first noticed Oberon’s lameness right before the first dressage lesson. The first dressage lesson was just about trying to respond to aids, and it wasn’t especially awesome.

February
Ahhh. The entire debacle with Oberon happened in February. Basically I had a meltdown and couldn’t pull myself together to work the horse. In order to cheer myself up, I posted a recap of all the horses I used to ride as a kid and some of the things I had learned.

March
Luckily February didn’t last long, and I managed to reach a tense peace with Oberon. The two major events in March were the horse trials and the purchase of Gracie. The horse trials was both exciting and disappointing; we survived, but we were eliminated. We got Gracie started and tried to figure out which horse was going to be sold.

April
We decided to sell Oberon and keep Gracie, and the whole month was spent brainstorming sales tactics and meeting with potential buyers.

May
May was a busy busy month. Oberon was sold. Unfortunately in hindsight, the new owner was a terrible person! I didn’t learn this until approximately six months afterwards, when I was contacted almost out of the blue about Oberon. Luckily, there is a happy ending. The horse eventually made it back to the pasture with a previous owner and is going to live out his days there. We also went to a dressage show, finished up the semester, and got to know Gracie better.

June
Summer started out crazy. I taught summer camp and rode some of the ponies. Jellybean finally pooped while being ridden.

July
July started off with the horse trials at Pine Hill where Knots and I competed in Goldilocks! Then Rob and I went on vacation for two weeks. Finally July ended with a cold front of sorts and the beginning of the fall stress.

August
August was extremely busy! We bought and sold some cool things at the tack swap, Jellybean went on a trail ride, and I made some saddle covers. I also got bucked off of Jellybean, which hurt my back pretty good.

September
September was when school really started heating up. Ponies starting moving into the backseat. The ponies moved into a paddock and Knots joined them for awhile. The rain started and Jellybean managed to cut her leg apart.

October
October was personally an awful month for me. I took my prelims, and the month was basically spend doctoring Jellybean then coaching the kids at a couple of shows.

November
More coaching and more prelim awfulness! I recapped my competitions and the first really cold front came through. I threw down the gauntlet and decided to try for novice next year.

December
I finished my prelims and went to Ohio for Thanksgiving. Then I came back from vacation fired up! I got back on the riding bandwagon in between the crappy weather. I pulled manes and got my life rebalanced! I also volunteered at a show and audited the Buck Davidson clinic.

Wow. What a year. Now that I have reminded myself of all the things I have accomplished (or not) this year, I can start to put down my goals for 2014 on pen and paper. What was your favorite story from this past year? Leave us a comment 🙂

Winter Blehs

Short public service announcement: I have a lot of content I am behind on, so I am scheduling some posts every day for the next few until all the stories are drug out of me 🙂

Well. Winter break was supposed to be filled with ponies, and I have certainly spent a lot of time at the barn. However, the weather has been absolutely awful. Cold, rainy, temperatures in the low 40s with a wind chill down into the 30s. But we persevered and put on a Christmas camp. I only got to ride Knots one day in the past week or so, in the front pasture during a lesson with the kids. We worked on being calm in the open. I also tried out a new bit, just a D ring snaffle on a cob sized fancy hunt bridle. I didn’t see a huge difference, and we will still have to evaluate when we get nervous, ie at a show.

Teaching winter camp was enjoyable; we had fifteen people attend! We had lots of little kids and a few adults. I mostly taught the adults, and I spent a lot of time discussing the key points of owning horses. I also helped with the kids and we had some fun inside-ish activities for the truly terrible days. We had the kids do a scavenger hunt to find different colored horses and even had then ride bareback on the last day.

Cross country schooling is scheduled for Friday, weather permitting! I am certainly crossing my fingers I can get out there and prep before the event on Sunday. I’d like to be less nervous by the time we compete next weekend (!!!!).

Did I tell you about that? Knots and I will be running beginner novice at High Point Farm. It looks like our first goal is to not get eliminated :p.

We have cats EVERYWHERE

Jellybean tossed her blanket in the mud

Byron hated the cold

Knots and I run at jumps

Earlier last week I got back on the jumping lesson bandwagon with Maggie. One of our favorite instructors blew through for jumping lessons with us and Jeannette. We talked briefly about goals and where we were having trouble, then Amanda set up a gymnastic. It started out as canter poles, about 10 feet apart, much like an exercise from the Buck Davidson Clinic the past weekend. Whew.

The magic of half-halting is so tricky sometimes. We had a lot of trouble working on coming into jumps balanced. I was also having trouble not dropping him before the jumps. This lesson was definitely a little bit of a wakeup call, I really thought I had made some more progress, but unfortunately I was not as far along as I thought.

I definitely feel like I have some more important things to work on and I am re-inspired to ride as soon as all this silly water dries off the ground.