Thursday, December 26, 2019

Belated Christmas

Merry Christmas a day late! I played around with some black background pictures for the first time and I love how they turned out! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.

 Jetta was very festive even when I pulled her out of the pasture soaking wet and covered in mud:





Thursday, September 12, 2019

Real Life

Well, I'm about 12 weeks out from graduation and I've been working at an amazing clinic for the last couple months. It's been a huge change from school. I can't be happier at where I ended up - it was a massive source of stress for me that I didn't have a job offer until a few weeks before school ended. Then I ended up with two offers from two amazing local clinics, both of which were my dream jobs. I had the hardest time deciding between the two, but now I'm working at such a great place. It's still an internship, which I didn't want to do in the first place, but it's been great and I'm glad I chose it. I have a pretty good support system at the clinic. I'm riding with other doctors part of the week, and going solo the other part of the week.

On one hand it's been amazing, on the other hand it's been overwhelming, exhausting, and terrifying. But, I'm glad I chose this career path - it's the best!

The horses are doing well. My baby is officially two years old! She's looking pretty good most days, but very awkward others. She wore her bridle for the first time without incidence. The lunging training is slowly progressing.


2 year old glamour shots

Love this face


Saddle pads are not concerning. Lunge whips are definitely concerning.

Rose gold everything



Loving how she's developing
Real life is a tough balancing act. I can't wait to do more with this girl and get more training and adventures going!

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

The Ultimate Update

I feel like all I ever do anymore is write update posts. Also, I'm pretty sure that this is the longest I've ever gone without blogging. I just simply got too overwhelmed/busy to write about anything. The horses have definitely taken a back burner unfortunately, which was pretty unavoidable, but still a bummer.

I basically went through my phone's camera roll to see what happened in the several months since I last posted, so here goes:

Jetta got new matchy bell boots that were on clearance. I love how ridiculously fluffy everything is:


 Maisie also got some new boots - some incredibly shiny rose gold dressage boots:


Jetta officially turned 13 on April 5th so I got her some fun colored carrots with the very scary tops on them, but unfortunately didn't get as good a reaction as the first time I gifted her with whole carrots:

I also bought Jetta a pretty black Mattes pad to complete our all-black outfit:


Jetta also got the present of a grazing muzzle this year...

She is not amused... also I put this on wrong, but I fixed it eventually
This pasture is amazing... just a little too much

My chunky hippo horse
Jetta got to go to school with me for our equine dental course. I also got to weigh her on the real scale and she weighed in at a perfectly round 1200 pounds. Oof. I really do enjoy doing dentals and after an intensive week of doing dentals all day, every day I feel more than prepared to do them on actual client horses!


She had a bit of a wave mouth - I definitely need to work on my photo skills!

So cute and drunk

Patch, my first ever project horse, came up for sale again.  This probably deserves its own post, but who knows if I'll ever get around to that. Basically, after training Patch and selling her, I lost contact with her owners and they ended up abandoning her at a boarding barn. She was sold to recoup board cost and I was contacted by her new owner. This lady was in love with Patch and said she'd never sell her - I even went and visited her. She was now called Scribbles. Years pass and then I randomly saw her for sale on Facebook from a new owner so I messaged him, provided all my old pictures of her, and asked to be given the contact info for whoever bought her. I have no idea what happened between the last lady that owned her and the current owners who had owned her for several years and seemed to have done a wonderful job exposing her to literally everything. Long story short, they told me someone in Utah was purchasing her and they gave the new owners my contact info. A few weeks later, I get a facebook message from a local lady who used to work in the lab at the vet school and she had purchased Scribbles (Patch) and was hoping to give her a forever home. What a rollercoaster ride. I really hope this poor horse has her forever home because she has changed hands so many times and she really is a great horse that deserves a forever home. I really wanted to buy her back as a babysitter/friend horse but I just didn't have the funds.


She's very adorable
 One of my favorite local shows happened, but I hadn't really been riding Jetta all that much so I decided not to enter. I did trailer my friend's horse over and decided it would be a great field trip for Maisie - she was pretty good! I was very proud of her hauling skills - she loaded and unloaded 4 times in the course of one day since Dundee is so big and needed to be in the first slant spot, but he had to get dropped off first.


Acting like a big girl!

Trailer manners 100% installed

Leading manners were however not fully installed. I made the mistake of putting her big girl halter on her because I thought it fit finally (it doesn't) instead of her rope halter and she apparently did not remember our discussions about personal space and proceeded to run me over. Twice. Luckily my friend had a stud chain so she was introduced to that and we had no more incidences.

She does however stand fairly well for bathing now (grudgingly)

Yes, you should bite the tree when you're mad about life
And lastly, I got to see Trask at a recognized show! He was ridden by a trainer in first level and he did so well! He's matured a lot in the last couple years and I thought his test was very nice. Still some baby bobbles outside of the show ring, but I'm so proud of him! Kinda makes me miss the little guy.



 It's been a busy few months! Especially with vet school, graduation, new job, etc. More to come (hopefully soon-ish) on that!


Wednesday, June 5, 2019

Wave Wednesday

It's been a while (a really, really long while), but a full update will be coming soon! More importantly - I finally got to go for a beach ride! It's been almost five years since my last ride. 

Jetta's been to the beach a total of about 5 times, but I was still not sure if she'd remember the beach and be ok with everything. It ended up being the perfect day and both horses were great! Such a perfect way to celebrate finishing up vet school with a fellow student <3



 



Bay mares rock!

Pictures of me taking pictures of my horse lol - equitation be damned!





My fav picture
This was going to be semi-"wordless Wednesday" but this is too funny of a story. We crested the dunes to the beach access point and there was a horde of children on an apparent school field trip. They were all screaming and running around and throwing pieces of driftwood - the horses were TERRIFIED. We finally convinced them to walk through the group since they left us no option other than to go directly through the children, and as soon as the kids all saw us they started singing "Old Town Road" at the top of their lungs. What a weird experience...

Monday, February 4, 2019

Update Overload

I'm not even sure where to begin, it's been a while.

First off, most importantly... I passed my boards!!! In less than 5 short months I will actually be a DVM. It's crazy that it's finally almost here - exciting, but mostly terrifying. But that's another post. It's been a really long 4 years!

Lots of things have happened the last couple months:


Jetta did this. Because she's an idiot. Apparently her neck cover came off partially and when the BO called the horses in for dinner, she started running with the other horses, then obviously her neck cover was flapping around and "chasing" her. So the logical thing to do would be to run through the fence, right?

Such a dumb dumb

Luckily she ended up with no serious injuries, just a few superficial scrapes. The next day her legs were swollen, but she's a delicate flower and was never actually lame. A couple doses of bute and she was back to normal!

We went on a frosty New Years day ride which was lovely. But very very cold.




 I've been working with Maisie on groundwork and she's occasionally looking like a real horse a times. An awkward moose calf at other times.






Maisie got to go on another field trip to the barn. She got to hang out in the cross ties, where she's mostly trustworthy. And she got her first full bath! She was MAD about it, or as mad as a little baby horse can get. Lots of pinned ears and tail swishing, but that was it.

Finally getting almost trustworthy in the crossties
My two favorite nicknames for her: my baby string bean or baby noodle
Wearing Jetta's cooler


And then I had a bad day where I euthanized several horses in a row at school, so we did this:


And I didn't die. I never thought I would ride Jetta tackless simply because she's the kind of horse that likes to go-go-go and getting her to slow down is not her favorite. She's been a tough horse to train so while she's very responsive, she also doesn't have the most eager-to-please personality so I just resigned myself to not trusting her without tack, despite the fact that I love liberty work.

Speaking of liberty work, I do a lot of that on the ground with Jetta when I'm too lazy to ride and I've been having a ton of fun with it lately - Jetta is learning how to collect her trot and canter, in addition to changing the size of her circles while free lunging. I'm hopeful it'll translate to better transitions in the saddle!


How's that for a disjointed, overwhelming update post?!

Friday, January 4, 2019

Blogger Gift Exchange

I love this secret santa that Tracy at The Printable Pony hosts every year. I love putting together fun gifts for fellow equestrians, just as much as I love what people come up with for me!

This year I got a gift from Rebecca at Diary of the Over Anxious Horse Owner. She did a great job!



And she wrapped everything beautifully!

Well, it's sideways but oh well
I got a awesome set of monogram stickers, as well as one with Maisie and Jetta's name on them. I just have to figure out what all I want to put them on! Also, a pair of adorable socks with llamas in ties which are just hilarious. I absolutely love this brand of socks and already have a fair number of them so these will go nicely with all the rest! And lastly, some horse treats that Jetta has already eaten a large proportion of.

Thank you so much for all the goodies! I love them!