Monday night the hubby grabbed the mail, chuckled then handed me this saying “I guess you haven’t paid their mortgage for them yet this month.”
I just shook my head at him.
Inside was a hand written note by the owner. She added enough detail to make it known that she at least put some basic information about me and my horse in her system. It was super sweet and a lovely personal touch in today’s typically impersonal world.
The shop itself is nice and friendly. While they don’t have the largest selection, she tends to stock high quality, affordable items (example: chafeless and fleece girths versus high end leather anatomic ones) which fit in well with my current budget. Just because she doesn’t have it on the floor though, doesn’t mean she can’t get it for you. If you want something not in store, she will happily browse through her catalogs and order it for you. I got both of my show breeches that way. No shipping or custom order fee, just 50% owed at time of order. When my special order breeches did not fit, she took them back!
I love walking into the store and though I do wish she had a larger in store collection for me to get my hands on (one of the main reasons I like in store shopping versus online), the fact that she is so easy to work with and will order you anything you want, really makes her store special. The letter was a nice touch.
I do need a few more items, mostly a pair of black leathers as I am tired of pulling my brown ones off my jump saddle and moving them around all the time, so maybe it is time to stop back in and say hello to her inventory once again.
The order got a little messed up I think. We were supposed to read the red spine before the wilderness, but that one became available first. It really doesn’t matter in the end, but it did give me two picks in a row.
A book that you loved as a child: The Giver
The world is black and white and sheltered. Boys and girls line up at a pivotal age to be assigned their future: custodian, breeder, teacher. It has been this way as far back as nearly anyone can remember. Everyone is safe. Everyone is happy.
The group of children currently awaiting their assignments seem no different than any previous group. Each one is called up, given their assignment and go to hug their family. Except one child is skipped over. The crowd tries to ignore it, but it is impossible. What went wrong?
At the very end of the ceremony the boy is called up on stage. He has a very special assignment. He has been chosen to become the next keeper of memories. He will work along side the current one as he slowly has the memories of the old world transferred to him.
What he doesn’t realize is that there was once color in the world. And laughter. And cold snow. There were once wars and fires and sickness. As he becomes more and more burdened with the memories of his society he begins to wonder what it would be like to release them all.
I first read this book in 5th grade around the time it was published. I was immediately intrigued. A world without color? Without hope and fear? What would that be like? How could one person shoulder the burden of all those memories?
Re reading the book was like a walk down memory lane. I could still picture the first time I read it. Did it stand the test of time? I believe so. The boom is t too clear of why they live that way or why there are people out there living a perfectly normal life. Is this is only group like this? Why did they decide to hide? How did they do it?
The ending is also extremely open ended. It almost seemed like a sequel would come, but it never did. I believe the book is slated to be a movie or already has. I don’t keep up with that so I am not sure. Either way you should read it. It won’t take long to get through it.
It just isn’t worth it. Not worth the time, not worth the frustration, not worth ruining our relationship over. At least not right now.
There are dozens of reasons why riding Gem at home isn’t working out. The most important are the frequency she gets worked and the area she gets worked in.
Gem has always been worse behaved at “home” than trailering out. In fact, when we lived in WI the one barn had 200 acres of trails on property. She was a nut job on those. Trailer out to the trail head? Wonderful, well at least as good as she gets. Rides in the “home” arena were always a crap shoot. The entire first month at a new facility was always awful as I had to re teach Gem that she did in fact have to work for me 3 hours a week and that that didn’t qualify as animal abuse. I can still remember in perfect detail the first time I rode her in the grass arena at the last barn we were at. We would reach the far end of the field, she would break into canter and try to take me right back to the gate so she could leave. Fun? No, but with persistence she eventually learned that by doing so it just got her to a closed gate and circled back to work some more. Eventually she does stop doing that and the rides become more even and more purposeful. But back then I was riding her 3 days a week in an enclosed arena with fences and gates and all those other nice physical boundaries.
Now, however, I ride 1-2 times a week if I am lucky and have a completely open 5 acre grass field to ride in with no fencing or other solid boundaries. It is a recipe for disaster and one I am tired of dabbling in.
I had really wanted to ride Wednesday, but didn’t walk into the door until 7:45 pm. I had about an hour of light to play with, but hadn’t seen Wyatt all day and that is more important, so when he asked me to play Play Dough there was no way I was saying no. Friday was my next shot. Work was slammed and I got home at 9:30 pm. Saturday Dusty worked then had plans to run in the afternoon. Finally, I got my chance on Sunday. Last week wasn’t a fluke either. My weeks almost always look something similar in one way or another.
Things started off pretty well Sunday morning. She had her halt back which was nice to see. I know she is getting bored with all the walk trot, 20 m circle, serpentine, figure 8 stuff so I thought I would get her cantering early on. She loves a good canter to stretch her back. I asked her for canter out of a decent trot and she gave it to me. Then she proceeded to grab the bit and run across the 5 acres towards her pasture. Ah hell no mare. I asked for bend, when she didn’t respond I asked for trot, when she didn’t listen I one rein stopped her ass and made her stand still all pissed off until I asked her to walk again. Then we walked up and down that field halting and walking and halting and walking.
At that point I let her trot away from her pasture and made her walk towards it. That lasted two laps when she then picked up the canter instead of the trot and tried to toss her head and run all the way back home. I shut her down immediately.
But here is the thing. I was having ZERO fun. None. I was frustrated. I was angry that she couldn’t just freaking walk down the damn field. She is 19 years old. 19! This isn’t our first ride. She can freaking WALK!
I took a deep breath, got off and was done. I did throw her on the lunge line and watched her w/t/c both directions mostly to see if she was lame somewhere I wasn’t catching, but also to just get her listening and focused. She wasn’t happy, but she was 100% sound and capable. While I know some people will judge me for ending the ride on a bad note, go ahead judge away…this is me not caring, at the time it was the best decision. My relationship with Gem is what is the most important to me. Not an all out brawl to see who can win. I don’t have the right tools in my box to work with this. I don’t know what to do when she blows me off and I’ve asked nicely, held my position, then asked again a little louder and louder and louder until I have to scream it at her. All I can do is get into a fight and maybe squeak out something decent, but in the process ruin everything I’ve been working on building towards. The short term gain of her minding me in that field Sunday isn’t worth the long term loss.
Trainer can come to me, but right now I don’t want her to. I have no interest in paying $55 to spend an hour being miserable trying to get my mare to walk. If I had an arena to work in, it would be different. If I could consistently ride her 3 days a week at home, it would be worth it. But to ride her once or maybe twice a week in the big 5 acre field? No, I don’t think it is. Instead, I am going to continue to trailer her to Trainer’s barn. She behaves there, or at least behaves within our current skill level which allows us to work on things like bend, geometry, leg yields and jumping. Having free access to the barn is amazing and I plan to trailer out more often to ride on my own there. Take advantage of the dressage court and jump arena to practice for now. I need to find out what the barn hours are. They have great lights on the jump arena, so I can ride year round and after work even when it is dark, but I don’t know what time it officially closes to the public.
Anyway…those are a lot of words to say that I am putting a hold on any rides at home until such a time as I can ride much more consistently and/or set up an actual closed off work space to help with defining boundaries. It isn’t fair to either of us to hop on once every 10 days and expect work to happen in a large field where she has room to make really big mistakes that I can’t fix. Someday we will revisit using the field, but not until we have a lot more rides with Trainer under our belt.
Until I have some more interesting topics to share, I thought it would be fun to do some fun lists and who doesn’t love a little week day alliteration? First up, brought on by my most recent ride, the five worst rides I’ve had on Gem, in ascending order of horror.
5.) Mud. Falling off. Stupid decisions. This has them all!
This story goes back circa spring 2010 and both Gem and I were very, very different back then. The Dynamic Duo were being boarded at a “training” facility, hahahaha but that is another story, 50 minutes away from us. It was nearing our time to move to OH and I believe this was our very last ride there.
For some reason that is completely unfathomable to me now, Dusty and I decided to ride Gem and Pete in the small indoor arena while an old fashioned sprinkler was running. You know the type – slow around then zips back? Yep…smart, right?
Dusty went first and hugged the arena wall which gave Pete plenty of time to eye the sprinkler. When it came his way, only his hooves got splashed and all was well and good. When it was my turn, I tried to do the same only husband, using some sort of male logic, came trotting up between Gem and the sprinkler. Pete gets hit full blast in the chest and freaks out which causes Gem to subsequently freak out bolting bucking and throwing me to splat in the mud.
I was pissed though not at Gem.
4.) Endurance ride Twilight Zone.
Flash forward to fall of 2011 in WI. Gem and I had completed our first LD three weeks earlier coming in 8th (though for full disclosure I fell off at mile 21). The season ended Halloween weekend and I was too excited to wait until the following May to begin again. Dusty and Pete joined us and even signed up last minute for the ride!
The actual time spent on Gem was fine. We finished with all As in 4 1/2 hours including the 50 minute hold, brain can’t do math right now, tied for last with Pete in a drizzling rain that had lasted all weekend.
What made it awful was the entire rest of the experience. We arrived with several dishes for the pot luck. Waiting for the ride meeting and dinner in a crammed room, we happened to sit right next to the entrance door to the food. Once dinner was called, everyone ran to the door and Dusty ended up holding it open. Multiple people laughed at us holding the door and waiting patiently telling us that being nice would make us starve. These were adults. We watched as people left with heaping plates of food on multiple trays per person and when it was finally time for us to enter, it was all gone. No food left. We then sat for the ride meeting, hungry, and watched as people threw away all that food they so greedily took. We ended up eating peanut butter in our tent.
During the ride itself, people laughed at our slower pace over twisting, technical train covered in more roots than I had ever seen. Karma took over though – the ride had a really high pull rate for lameness and the vet went ballistic on people.
When we finished, 4 1/2 hours later with a 6 hour time limit, they had already taken down the finish line, nobody was around and dinner had been started an hour early. When we found people they told us to go faster next time, never mind that both our horse (draft horse included) had all As on the card in a ride where a lot were pulled. The vets told us we were rude for making them wait in the drizzle. Excuse me? We could have turned around before the finish and done another loop and still been under 6 hours!
It was enough for me to quit endurance until we moved to a new region.
3.) First solo conditioning ride: January 2014.
When we moved to SC, I decided that I wanted to try again with endurance. Re read #4 to see why I gave up on it back in WI. Wyatt was just over a year old which took Dusty out of the picture as a training partner and I didn’t know anyone local yet.
No to be deterred, I loaded Gem and made my way to the Clemson Experimental Forest for the first time. I wanted to go for an hour. Now, I had had Gem for 4 years at this point, she had done two LD rides and been on countless miles of trails with me and Dusty, this wasn’t her first trail outing by any means.
Dusty went off hiking with the dogs and kiddo and I pointed Gem down a different trail. I had no real distance marker in mind, but figured we could do about 4-5 miles in the hour given her past performances.
30 minutes later we had gone 0.75 miles. I was in near tears and so frustrated I couldn’t speak. She had spun around to go back to the trailer nearly a thousand times in that half an hour, spooked at nothing and crawled at a snails pace that my 1 1/2 year old son could have beaten. To say it was demoralizing is an understatement.
Of course, once I turned her around she decided it was time to gallop all the way back. The next 30 minutes were spent turning back around another thousand times only this time directed by me as I refused to let her go more than a walk back home.
By the time an hour and 1.5 miles were up and I was untacking her, I was near ready to give up on endurance and sell her to a meat packing plant. Thankfully, I did neither.
Pretty sure we aren’t even on the trail here. It looks to be off to the right. Not surprising given how she would turn around all the time. 2.) The clinic from Hell.
Ah. This still makes me angry. Flash back to our fake training barn in spring of 2012, OH. Trainer’s friend and clinician, B, was coming to the barn to do a clinic. At this point in my career with Gem we were just finally starting to walk with some trot work and no canter at all because asking made Gem buck. Pete had a nasty rearing problem any time you asked him to stand still for more than a minute.
Trainer, likely trying to drum up business for her friend, signed both of us up for a half flat work and…wait for it…half cross country jump clinic. I wasn’t so keen, but she said we were ready. HA!
There were five us in the group: Dusty/Pete, Me/Gem, a scared to death young girl on a schoolmaster that a monkey could have ridden blind folded, and two middle aged women on their OTTBs. The clinician immediately hated us. Her whole shtick was to yell, make fun of everyone and screech in the most grating nasal voice possible. That is just about the exact opposite type of personality to get me to do anything. Anyway…
The clinic started off with us all sitting on our horses in a circle listening to her. Pete reared and spun and bolted and did anything but stand still. The young girl cried. At least Gem and I could stand. Then we went around the arena on the rail at the walk and when the leader got to C they had to trot while B yelled and screeched about how awful they were and shouldn’t they just get a mountain bike instead? Once everyone went around we had to canter. That went awful in every respect for us.
Having been yelled at for a half hour inside, we moved outside where she proceeded to point us over solid obstacles. I was petrified. Gem was awful. Eventually she told me I was so awful at riding that I was kicked out of her clinic and to just go wander around somewhere out of her sight. I wanted to punch her teeth in. Trainer was laughing the whole time. Two weeks later we moved to WI.
Walking around out of her sightLearning Pete lives to jump at the same clinic. Dusty was much better at tuning her out
1.) Trail ride horror show.
It was the summer of 2012. We were still living in WI and knew Wyatt would be born that fall. We spent the summer getting in as much time on fun, childless stuff as possible and one major thing on the list was one last ride together at our favorite trail system: Castle Rock. These trails were so much fun. Mostly double wide sandy roads, some single track technical trails in the woods and a river entrance made perfect for swimming. We used to gallop for miles and miles.
On this particular day I was riding in my WISE cross country saddle which I adored, but ended up not fitting the mare well enough. We were having a great time trotting and cantering through the woods when we came upon one of the narrower and more technical sections. I still don’t know what Gem’s issue was, but she ducked her shoulder and spun 180. The saddle slipped and I was dumped hard on my hip. I got right back on, but I hurt. It was extremely hot and humid and my nerves were a bit wracked from the fall. My guts decided I needed to go…now. I pulled over and had pretty intense diarrhea (too much info??) in the woods with mosquitoes and horseflies everywhere. My butt itched for a week! To make matters worse, in a park where we had never run across anyone ever before, along comes a big group and there just wasn’t enough vegetation around for proper coverage. It was mortifying.
The ride back was 5 miles and I couldn’t trot due to the hip hurting, but my stomach was killing me and I just wanted to get back before having to partake of the woods again. Didn’t happen. Multiple times we had to pull over so my guts could relieve themselves in the semi open forest with minimal coverage and only leaves which I desperately hoped were not poisonous to wipe with. It was the worst 5 miles I have ever ridden. To make it worse, the heart necklace Dusty had gotten me for Christmas the first year we dated (2003) broke during the fall and came off and I didn’t realize it until that night when I took a shower. We never made it back to the park and even if we had I likely never would have found it again.
The only picture of Castle Rock I could find and given the date stamp should be from that same ride. This is one of the few wooded areas, so I’m guessing it was right before she dumped me
So there you all have it. The 5 worse rides I have had while with Gem. Granted, most of them weren’t actually due to Gem, but without her they wouldn’t have happened so they count!
Between all the rain, the hay growing to a point where I couldn’t use the field and then wanting time in the arena to practice course work and our dressage test, I haven’t ridden Gem at home in well over a month. Maybe closer to two.
Monday night I dressed her up in the dressage tack and wanted to work on using my inside leg for bend and re introducing the canter. It ended up being one of the most frustrating rides I have had in a long time.
I kept all of Trainer’s words running through my head as well as the advice from Emma’s great post on auditing the clinic (read it here) and chose every step that I wanted Gem to take. I sat up tall, tightened my core and was greedy with my position (something Trainer is always after me about). I used half halts. I breathed deep and relaxed.
I was therefore a little lost when Gem basically just gave me the horsey middle finger and raced around the field at her best endurance trot not heeding my aides at all. Trainer has also gotten after me about being too lenient with her – if I ask her softly and she ignores me I need to get more aggressive. I did. She still blew through me deciding it was more fun to do whatever she wanted to do.
At one point, and I’m not particularly proud of this but I like being honest, I was full out hauling on her reins while sitting deep and tall, tightening my core and keeping my legs on and she still would not halt. Pulsing the request to not allow a full out pulling war was useless. I was beyond frustrated.
When I asked her to walk, she would either jig or break to trot. Halting was a nightmare. I don’t know what bee got up her butt, but neither of us was enjoying this ride. Still, I couldn’t just quit. I’ve done that before and all it does is teach her that acting that way gets her out of work.
Instead I chose a straight line along the short side of the field and made her walk. If she jigged or broke to trot she got halted. Sometimes nicely and sometimes aggressively. Once we reached the end of my line, we turned and did it again going back the other way. Over and over and over. We did this for 30 minutes before she settled and actually gave me a flat walk.
Then I asked her to trot. Maybe I should have called it a day once she gave me the flat walk, but it had only been 30 minutes and I wanted to work on our canter. I asked her to trot and she immediately zoomed away. No, that is not the right answer. So we worked on trot walk trot transitions although “worked on” is being a little nice about it. Basically I asked her to walk at a very definite spot and she told me where to stick my walk transition instead.
I was out of ways to improve it. I sat tall, tightened my core, had my shoulders back, breathed in and sat down in the saddle to cue for walk. She stared off into her pasture at Pete. I used more rein. She flicked her ears back and gave me the finger. I used more rein than I am comfortable using and she still didn’t give a crap. I turned her in a tiny circle and she finally walked. Repeat time and time and time again. When she finally walked for me, I let her have a break.
At this point I was on a mission with her. She wasn’t in pain. She wasn’t confused. She wasn’t afraid. Now I know that most times it is the rider’s fault and I think I have been more than willing to take the blame each and every time, but Monday night boiled down to Gem just not wanting to work at home while Pete was watching and grazing in the next field. She both knew what I wanted and was more than capable of performing a simple trot to walk transition when asked in a fair and consistent manner. Gem just didn’t want to play.
Asking for any sort of bend was completely out of the question. Any slight touch with my inside leg just sent her more forward and she kept ignoring my half halts prior to using it as Trainer has taught me to do. I gave up on those making a note to have Trainer out to my place again instead of trailering to her so she can help me when Gem decides she has no interest.
Finally, after 45 minutes of this crap I got Gem in a nice trot that was a good pace and not strung out. Trainer has scolded me for allowing Gem to canter from a bad trot, so I worked hard on getting the trot good before asking. Once I asked Gem picked up a lovely left lead canter and we floated over the ground. She maintained power steering and it was soft and light. Perfection really. I never wanted to stop. Eventually I asked her to trot again and she did without fuss, so we ended there on the only good note of the entire hour ride.
Angry mare is angry
She got a good cold hosing afterward as she was really sweaty. She was angry with me and let me know it. Part of me wonders if she isn’t a bit bored with all the walk trot we have been doing and just wants to stretch her back and canter. However, I can’t allow her to canter when she is a zooming and strung out race car, so she needs to figure out that she gets to do the fun stuff only when she is listening.
It seems like the spring rain is finally drying up a bit and the next cutting of hay won’t be for a while, so I should be able to get more frequent rides in at home to work on this. Trainer has been out of town doing Pony Club ratings, but I have a lesson scheduled next week. I’m debating on traveling there or having her come to me. Traveling there allows me to work on things better as Gem is in a much better frame of mind, but that doesn’t really help me when she checks out at home. It just feels like a waste of $55 when she comes to me and all we can work on is getting Gem to walk for the hour versus going there and working on bend, geometry and the like. I don’t know, I’ll have to think on it.
My turn was up and the topic was very broad. When I returned the last book I lingered in the library and perused the shelves looking for a good fit.
A book with a red spine: Cambodia Noir by Nick Seeley
Cambodia’ is a place where people go to get lost and never be found. Will has been living there for nine years getting lost in drugs and alcohol trying to kill his past and working as a photographer for a local newspaper.
His life has been a well oiled machine of working just enough to keep his job during the day and spending his nights getting lost in his addictions. That is until June Saito arrives in Cambodia as an intern for the paper. Will is out of town on a trip to acquire more drugs when June arrives and is put up in his apartment. Everyone views her as an up and coming journalist. Someone not afraid to get into the nitty gritty details of a story. June leaves on assignment one day and never returns. Most people believe she jumped ship and got lost or ended up as yet another American casualty, but when her sister flies in from the US with money to spend to find her, Will finds himself hired. He quickly becomes entangled in a spider web of deceit, drugs, murder and his own past.
The book is set in modern times and the author paints a picture of Cambodia that I fear is true while hoping it is not. Drugs, alcohol and sex addiction/trafficking are abundant throughout giving the book a gritty feel.
The prose themselves are written in a fast and sharp manner with short, quickly firing sentences. To me, it makes the book feel choppy and disconnected, but it also moves the story along quickly and keeps the reader’s attention.
Every character in the book is unlikable. Addiction extortion, bribery, murder. As the book progresses the main characters become caught in a downward spiral but not in an endearing and hopeless way. Instead I found myself hoping they would meet an end commiserate with the misery they have caused others.
The author tries hard to lead the reader down a certain path, but the twists and turns he throws in make no sense with the overall theme and the ending, wile a surprise, is so disconnected from the rest of the book as the leave me questioning why I even bothered. I’ll admit to not having seen it coming, but then looking back it made no sense at all.
Likewise, there are many scenes within the novel, that had it been a movie would have fallen into the gratuitous sex/violence category and made no impact on the theme or overall story line. Once scene in particular has Will paid to take photographs of a politician’s son having sex with a man in a hotel room. While Will is watching, both men are brutally murdered with a machete. It serves no real purpose in the story and could have easily been omitted.
I would not recommend this book. The end was not worth the effort of reading. 1/5
Saturday we packed up the car, made a pit stop to grab my mom, and headed to TN towards Dollywood. It’s been on my list for a long time and Wyatt is finally tall enough to ride most of the rides. In fact, at 42″, he can ride all but the tallest rollercoasters in the park.
Riding the tram from parking
The weather was next to perfect: neither too hot to be enjoyable nor too cold to want to go on the water rides. We arrived right as the gates were opening.
The park is in a big circle and we headed clockwise to see what kind of trouble we could find. I love rollercoasters, but the hubby and my mom are less enthusiastic so I was prepared to skip most things and just enjoy what Wyatt could ride.
The park put a lot of effort as thought into things beyond just the rides. Each section had lots of things to do and look at. I’m sure it all cost a fortune.
The park itself is really nice. Everything was sparkling clean and the employees were really nice and friendly. Wyatt was in a hard in between stage: too big to enjoy the little kiddie rides and while tall enough to ride most of the big rollercoasters he was too little to enjoy them. Even with that we found plenty to do.
The park is broken into sections and each was well decorated. I enjoyed the ambience of each although the 1950s styled section was my favorite. If I could live in any other era it would be the 50s with the sock hops, wonderful music, cool cars and relative prosperity. I was really good at taking pictures in the first section we hit, but after that the phone was placed in protection from water as we did a lot of water rides in the heat of the afternoon. Then I forgot all about it.
We missed out on the entire central aspect of the park and I think Wyatt would have found plenty to do there, but it was getting late and everyone was tired and ready to leave.
The day was really enjoyable. We rode plenty of rides with Wyatts favorite being the raft water ride although he was a bit too small to get much of the water spray.
There would only be two complaints I would raise about the park. First, the food was ridiculously expensive. It was bad enough to shell out $67 per ticket but all the lunches were $11 a pop. For chicken nuggets. A regular sized hot dog was $6! For a hot dog! I hate feeling ripped off. Second, the entrances to the rides were really difficult to find. We ended up waking around the outside of many rides just trying to figure out where to enter.
Wyatt rode this coaster which was pretty insane. He was tall enough and even though he saw how tall it went (one of the largest coasters they have) he said he wanted to go. We ended up in the very front car. I felt bad because even though I warned him it was faster and taller than anything he had done before, I realized later that this wasn’t even in his realm of possibility. He just didn’t understand having never experienced anything like it. He was terrified the entire time and I basically just held on to him and covered his eyes. Near the end of the ride the cars go into a small shed where fire works are. Fire lights up and the car gets blown backwards along the track. It was a lot of fun but he shrieked the entire time. Afterward he announced to everyone “I am never, ever riding that ride again. Ever!” He never cried though. It did make him more cautious going forward with rides.
I’d love to go back. Everyone was whooped when we left and Sunday was spent recuperating at home. Wyatt played play dough for a solid 8 hours. Next time I hope to get him on more rides as I was a bit sad walking past some of the coasters and not being able to go on. Dusty and I snuck away one time to ride the Mystery Mine coaster while my Mom took Wyatt on a different one, but other than that we stuck together.
Having been to Disney, Cedar Park, Six Flags in Ohio and Kennywood I’d say in comparison this one is like a mini Disney with all the scenery and then beautifully built rides. It wasn’t just steel coaster after steel coaster. There were a few really big steel coasters to go on for adrenaline junkies but most of the rides were more toned down and fun. Much more my style. I would recommend it for anyone in the area.
While all the rain this year has allowed the pasture to grow and the hay supply to be abundant, it has also allowed the insects to go a little wild. It is to the point where they are having issues eating their grain between stomping and biting at the nasty little buggers. I’ve also noticed that their hooves are starting to chip from the combination of being softer from all the rain and the trauma of all the stomping.
We have been spraying them with heavy duty fly spray frequently but it seems like it only works for a day and then they either sweat it off with the high temps and humidity or it rains and washes it away. Even the supposedly water proof stuff isn’t lasting more than 48 hours.
Past use of feed throughs didn’t produce any results for us and just kept Pete from eating.
I’ve started looking into fly sheets for them. Riding Warehouse has a good variety at a reasonable cost. If we go that route it has to be an open enough mesh to not cause overheating in the hot sun and high humidity. It’s in the upper 80s and low 90s and is only going to heat up from here. I’d rather them get bitten than have heat stroke. Plus most of the bugs seem to be on their legs.
That lead me to look into just getting fly boots or those newish shoo fly bags. That way the legs are protected and they won’t overheat. But I’ve never been fond of wrapping the legs up and I’ve read that people have issues keeping them on.
So that leads me to asking you all….fly sheet versus fly boots versus shoo fly versus something I haven’t thought of?? They need some relief and it is too early in the season to ignore. I don’t have a barn, so stalling them with a fan isn’t an option and Dusty looked at me weird when I suggested we buy a massive outdoor fan and put it in the pasture.
Three years ago I was hungry. My name was flashing in black letters on a white background, shiny and new and hanging on the side of my office building. My office building. It held so much promise, so much excitement and so many opportunities to fail.
My appointment book was breathtakingly empty. I jumped every time the pone rang and begged for it to not be a wrong number or sales call. I needed patients. Pay roll, utility bills, the mortgage…all of it was due and none of it cared if I was busy or not.
I was hungry. I was scared.
Every spare moment of my time, which ended up being a lot in the beginning, was spent coming up with ways to fill the appointment book. I made lists of local offices that could be referral sources and then visited each and every one with bagels and a brochure in my hand. I hoped the manic look in my eyes as I glanced over their full waiting rooms wasn’t apparent to the receptionist who took my brochures and hopefully at least glanced at them before throwing them all away.
Brochures, ads, blog posts were all written and re written in a hope to attract people to my practice so I could have the opportunity to meet them and show them that I was worth their time and trust.
I was hungry.
Then an amazing thing happened. I began to see my hard work pay off. I secured a good referral source and started to get some patients. Then they referred friends and family and now, three years later, my schedule is mostly full.
I’m no longer hungry. I am comfortable.
This is an even worse place to be.
Now, my bills are being paid. Pay day is no longer a gut wrenching affair and I even had some extra cash to update my office a little. I could spend the next 25 years of my career just as I am: neither wonderfully successful nor failing. I find this place to be even scarier than when I first unlocked my door and challenged the world to come see me.
Being here means that I am locked: too afraid to branch out and reach for the stars for fear of ruining all I built, yet I’m still vulnerable. At this stage all it would take is someone still hungry to come in and steal everything from me. Someone willing to go out and take risks, pound the pavement and do what I used to do. Then I would find myself forced to do it all over again as I watch my business slowly die all around me.
Being comfortable means you aren’t failing. It also means your aren’t growing.
This past week I made a big decision to step out of my comfort zone. I invested in new technology for my practice, something I deeply believe in and truly believe it will help my patients heal faster and return to their lives sooner. It also cost more than my salary to purchase and is a service not covered by health insurance so patients will need to pay cash.
This investment could help my practice grow in so many ways.
This investment could put me out of business.
I’m no longer comfortable. I’m hungry again. Hungry to spread the word about my new offering. Hungry to garner a new demographic. Hungry to make this work.
This post has been written about a dozens times now and each time I start rambling off in some odd direction I didn’t mean to. There was just so much happening in my brain as we drove home Sunday.
First and most important, I absolutely loved this show, the venue and all the people. Everyone kept telling me how awesome eventers are, but honestly I was very skeptical as I had been told that about other horse disciplines and rarely found it to be true. Not this time though! Everyone I spoke to, from the German guy who has competed at Bromont (no clue what his name was but everyone else seemed to know him), to the older lady who had just completed her first dressage test in 18 years, was not only pleasant and polite, but was genuinely nice and helpful. I had a mini panic attack when it was time to tack up and I had no clue where to put my bridle number. Google brought up anything from “always on the left” to “always on the right” to “whichever side will face the judge at C on your first turn”. I finally just stopped a lady walking by and asked and she said she always puts hers on the right, so I did. (Later Trainer said she always does it on the left, so I am thinking it honestly doesn’t matter).
Even the ring stewards were overly friendly. By the time my division went it had been a long and hot day for everyone and yet the dressage steward took the extra time to pluck the grass out of Gem’s mouth to make her look pretty for the judge and came over to me after the test telling me I looked good int he test and hoping I came back for more in the future. The jump steward was hilarious and kept me calm. It was an amazing experience filled with people who were out there doing what they loved. Even those who had a bad round just chalked it up to a bad day, still smiled and went on to watch and encourage others.
Coming from the world of endurance where people are oh so happy to put the word “just” in front of limited distance or claim you aren’t doing real endurance if it isn’t a 50 miler (something that really really really pisses me off), being in the amoeba division and having those from the earlier intermediate division come over and congratulate me and comment on my mare was refreshing. Maybe this attitude goes away at recognized trials, but there was never once a feeling of being thought of as less due to the division I chose to compete it. Everyone was happy that people were out doing what they enjoy doing with their horse.
Second, this sport has so much potential that I felt even more energized and motivated after than before. I want to improve. I want to grow. I want to go out there and kick some major butt and do it all over again. In fact, had we not been the very last division, I would have easily dropped the money to add in another jump round or two. I loved it. Loved, loved loved.
There was a third, but now I forget what it was. Basically, I achieved all my pre show goals, I’ve fallen in love with this sport, Gem was happy and relaxed the entire day and looked gorgeous all dolled up with her mane in a braid and I felt really proud of what we accomplished by the end of the day. I have a ton of home work to work on, I can’t wait until my next lesson to talk to Trainer about my new goals and see what the future holds for us.
The Roaming Rider 