An Award

This makes me ridiculously happy. I haven't gotten a blogger award before! So thank you Megan, for my very first award :)

The conditions for this award are to list 15 blogs that you read (yikes! That's almost more than the ones I read, lol. How about just 10?) and I have to list 7 things about me. Well, here goes:

From Race Horse to Show Horse

The Glorious Hoof

The Adventures of Lucy

Tekes Tally-Ho

It's Quarters for Me

Eventing A Gogo

Fresh Perspective

Contact

G is for Greta

Sweet Horse's Breath

Whew, that was a lot! Ok, now how about 7 things about me. Hmmm

1. I like tack. A lot. But you probably already know that. I think that if I didn't want to become a vet, I'd love to work for SmartPak. Not only do I love their products, but also their marketing and promotions, customer service, etc. But hey, I could still work for them as a vet, they have a staff veterinarian!
2. Not a morning person. At all. I like sleep, no actually I love sleep. The only thing that can get me out of bed at the crack of dawn is a horse show :) 
3. Another career I thought about was photography. I love doing it, but it just doesn't seem condusive to a well-paying job to support my ponies so I will continue to do it in my spare time. I love landscape and animal photography and often am the photographer at horse shows.
4. Favorite subject in school - biology. Definitely.
5. I'll admit it, I drink energy drinks. The only one I like is RedBull, the other ones tend to taste nasty IMO. Coffee doesn't like me very much so at the end of a long week when I have to wake up for an 8am class, instead of grabbing coffee, I go for an energy drink. Unhealthy? Yes, most probably. Necessary? Uhuh.
6. The other thing that I do a lot of besides horses is reading. I read pretty much anything though Fantasy (stuff along the lines of Harry Potter, for example) is my favorite. Favorite mythical creature? Toss up between a dragon (the nice intelligent kind) or Pegasus. My horse + wings = incredibly awesome. But I also like mystery, action, historical fiction, humor, whatever. Not to mention horse magazines and educational (training, theory, conformation, nutrition, etc) books.
7. Favorite colors - bright sky blue/turqoise/aqua/whatever you want to call it and hot pink. Probably not a good combination, but individually I must say that they look quite awesome on my horses as saddle pads and boots.

Thank you again to Megan for my first award!

More Great Rides

Jetta continues on her well-behaved streak. Friday I didn't have time to ride so I just worked with her at liberty. It's something I haven't really done a lot of recently. Jetta, after running off a little steam at first, will use only a small portion of the arena to go around me and will listen to voice and body aids for walk, trot, canter and stop/come in. It's so neat to know that you can control your horse in a large arena with no halter or lunge line! Here's a video of her running around. This is mostly before she started to go in a circle around me. It's very long, but slightly entertaining :)

Ok... it won't upload. Grr. I'll try tomorrow so if you're really dying to see her running around check back soon!

After "lunging" both ways and consistently listening to my aids, I asked Jetta to follow me around the arena as if I was leading her, but again, sans halter or lead rope. She was super good about sticking close to me and trotting, walking, halting, even backing up in step with me! This is something I played with a lot doing Parelli and while a lot of people might say that it's ridiculous and has no practical basis, my reasons for doing it are: 1) It teaches the horse to listen to your body language rather than a halter so you gain better control over them in more situations, 2) you gain your horse's respect, you know that they choose to be following you rather than running away and 3) it's just plain fun!! Why would you not do it when it's just something fun to do when you're bored or don't have time to ride?!

Running across the arena with your horse trotting at the same speed, then stopping quickly and having your horse stop too is a pretty neat feeling. Jetta was just so good!

Then I rode again today and she was very well-behaved in the saddle. She didn't try to rush or lean on me at all! That is, until I asked her to go across a cavaletti someone left out. It was about 2" tall and she kept trying to catapult herself over it. Sigh. Eventually we had trotting over it all sorted out, but cantering was a different story. We worked it out, but it had started out so nicely! This is why we need to do lots of rides with jumps and poles so that she realizes that she doesn't have to launch herself over them. Silly pony. But it was still a pretty good ride and she was so good that I didn't even bother cross-tying her when I unsaddled her and picked her feet out. Such a good pony! Of course, I made sure to check that the barn doors were closed, just in case...

I'm really liking these nice rides. I'm hoping that they're not just a fluke and that it's just a sign of Jetta growing up! Let's hope that there's only upward improvement from here! Oh, and I forgot - we signed up for a dressage show next weeked. Eek! Let's hope this goes well.

Saturday Links


If you haven't found this blog yet, go look! It's a great blog dedicated to finding horsey deals, sales, giveaways, etc. I love it! Seriously Horsing Around

I saw this car decal over at Stacey's blog - I. Want! It's so neat :)

I like breastplates. Especially unusual ones. My past favorites were the Vespucci Jumper Breastplate, Voltaire Design Convertible breastplate, and Antares breastplate. This one has completely replaced the Vespucci one! It has the same Y-configuration but it's super pretty. I'm obsessed with fancy stitching so this is definitely a new fav! Now if I could only find someone who sells them in the US...

Love these shirts. They have dressage, jumping and xc shirts, very neat.

Contests Galore!

I'll admit, this is a shameless self-serving post. I get bonus points for spreading the word about these contests, but hey, you also learn about them too if you haven't already!

Contest #1

Stacey at Behind the Bit is offering a free custom made bling browband. Oooh, shiny :) That would be so completely awesome to win. Click here to go to the blog. You'll have to wait until the 18th of October until you can enter. All you have to do is leave a comment!



Very pretty and high quality stuff! This is what Stacey's
browband looks like, but the winner could have any design they wanted!

Contest #2

Kate at The Adventures of Lucy is giving away a neat painted saddle pad. She is a wonderful artist and has several pads that you can choose from or you could get your initials. I have a thing for saddle pads, especially unique ones and these definitely fit the bill! They're lovely. I have lots but I always want more. I think I'll finally have enough when I have one of each color. Maybe? Haha. Click here to go to her contest page. Contest ends October 21st.



I have my eye on this pad. It is so gorgeous!
I have no need for another white pad and I don't
really even like fish, but it's so pretty!



In Which We Have a Scarily Good Ride

It's very rare that I combine *scary* and *good* in the same sentence when talking about Jetta. Usually it's just *scary*. But we had such an amazing ride today!!

Before I went out to ride today I got all of the horsey blankets washed. I sat at the laundromat for an hour and a half to wash all four blankies! But I'm happy that it's all done.

Then I headed out to the barn to ride my girl. While I was planning on riding her yesterday, it never really happened :( There never was a break in the rain. It poured! And I didn't really feel like riding because of all my homework. I felt really bad though because I know she probably didn't get to go outside so she had to hang out in her stall all day. Poor pony.

Anyways, I made it to the barn while there was a break in the rain! Woo, sunshine! I walk, trot, cantered in the arena and she was ah-maz-ing! She didn't do her whole, trot faster and faster until I give her a big half halt and then start trotting faster again until I half halt and so on. But she was so good! It was almost too good to be true. We did leg yield at the walk and then we did some leg yields at the trot on the circle, as per usual. We then had an awesome leg yield at the trot on the straight away - yes! First time success. We also did some stretchy trot circles, which was great. That kind of deteriorated over the summer, but it was great today.

Cantering was even amazing! She transitioned up nicely and it felt so good that I even asked her for a lengthened canter - so great! She feels like such a warmblood when we lengthen at the canter because she's just so light on the forehand and you can really feel her come up under you and round and push from her haunches. She was just amazing. We only did a short ride because she was being so good so I wanted to reward her. She was such a good girl and so laid back that she had me a little scared. I was thinking that maybe she didn't feel very good.

When we went out on the trails, the BO's dog came with. She is the cutest, sweetest little Weimaraner ever! I'll have to get a picture of her sometime. Her name's Paris. We started trotting with Paris running in front of us, and Jetta wanted to race really bad. Uh, no. She wouldn't listen and kept trying to break into a canter and not listening so we ended up walking the whole time, which was fine with me. I think she's feeling just fine, despite how calm she was in the arena :) The ground was a little slick from the rain so walking was the better choice and it was just a nice relaxing ride out in the open.

It always smells so good after the rain. Jetta had her giant walk goin on. It feels like I'm almost riding a Tennessee Walker or something because she has like a 8" overstep at least. Paris was super good on the trails, trotting in and out of the Christmas trees and coming when I called. I hope I can have such a good barn dog someday! Jetta kept a cautious eye on her and really wanted to race her, but was well behaved. Not trying too hard to stomp on her, which was good!

It was just such a nice ride. Made my whole day just so much better. ♥ my pony

Life as Usual

Well, not too much excitement is happening over here. Jetta had the weekend off while I was at home and ML rode her on Monday. ML leased Miss Katy last year so now that Katy has a new home, ML is horse-less so several of us at the barn have taken pity on her and lent her our horses for a ride or two :) I hope she gets a horse soon so we can all go riding together! We are now a group of four that all have horses at the same barn and go to the same school, so we really enjoy hanging out at the barn together.

On a related note, what is with barn drama?! I hate, hate, hate barn drama, yet it seems that almost every barn I board at has some. Counting down the days until I no longer have to board at this barn. While I could move barns right this minute if I wanted to, the problem is that there is no where that is as nice or as inexpensive as this place. Most barns charge at least $100 more for the same or worse care and I can't afford that extra $100, not to mention that there are some people at the barn that I love to hang out with and I'd really miss them! Two more years, two more years. It's sad that I'm only in my first month of being back at the barn and I'm already disliking it. Sigh...

My parents got me
a cake from Sweet Life.
Best. Cake. Ever!

Anyways. My b-day was yesterday and it was a pretty good day (minus the barn drama). Except for the rain and the fact that I had class. Oh well. My new roommates were super awesome and made me a cake and then took me to dinner. Now I have two cakes (one from my parents). Help! I'm going into cake overload! I'm currently trying to enlist friends to come eat cake :]

I have survived my first week at school with no emotional break-downs (success!) and have started taking an Intro to Equine Science class, which is the most absolutely basic equine class you can think of and it's a prerequisite to get into other Equine Science classes as well as a requirement to minor in Equine Science. Guess what we learned in lab the other day? How to lead and halter a horse! So exciting (not). We stood in the rain for an hour while we learned this. But it's good for the few non-horsey people in the class after all it is a basic necessary skill. Hopefully as we get farther into the curriculum I might actually learn something new. I'll keep you updated!

So yeah, that's life right now. I'm going to ride Jetta this evening and hope for a break in the rain so we can go for a trail ride. Fingers crossed!

Pretty Toes

Well, I took pictures of Jetta's feet. And the pictures turned out looking terrible, lol. Oh well. At least you can see what they're looking like right now.

I tried to clean them up the best I could without washing, but the pictures make them still look really bad. I tried, promise! But anyways, here they are:



All four pretty toes!



Left front profile

Left front solar

Left hind profile

Left hind solar

Right front profile

Right front solar



Right hind profile
Note: This is the leg that she injured a couple
years ago so you might notice that there's some
permanent fill in this leg. Ugly, but sound!



Right hind solar

Sorry for the terrible pictures, I'll try better next time to get some clean(er) tootsies and try to match all the photo angles so it's easier to see them! As you can tell, they're not 100% perfect, textbook examples of bare feet, but it's working for us. What I do love though, is how healthy and large her frogs are and how de-contracted her heels are! They just look lovely to me :) We're still dealing with a bit of thrush in the frog, but it's slowly but surely disappearing. We also have some quarter cracks on her hind hooves that open up wide whenever she's close to due for a trim. I think that's in part due to her flatter anatomy of her foot so any excess length must come off in some form or fashion, but more frequent trims should prevent that. Overall, not too shabby!