Storm

My Night/Day

Went and saw Mockingjay Part I last night and it was pretty good.  I’m not going to put any spoilers out there but it gets increasingly disturbing as it goes; it has a quite disturbing ending.  Boyfriend stayed over last night then we were bought to go riding and discovered Chicklet had escaped from her designated area so I had to run up and get her first.  Finally got to go on our trail ride and Cheyenne was pretty dang good considering it was only the third time of her having someone on her!  She’s coming along nicely; she’s going to make someone a wonderful horse.  After our trail ride we went out to Pizza Hut and now I’m attempting to type this while my boyfriend keeps blowing a balloon up in my face.  What an interesting life I lead…       

Busy Bee

So much to do today!  I have three homework projects to do by Monday and the dishes to do.  Still have to finish feeding and putting horses away and maybe fit the hobbles to Dancer and anything else that needs done.  Sale ads need editing so hopefully I can get some horses sold!! Buttttt, step one of doing homework comes first!  So on to doing two computer assignments, one speech assignment, and even a religions assignment.  Hopefully I’m not forgetting anything!    

Monday I missed my computer science class because somebody left the gate to the back pasture open and I spent my morning trying to get horses put back where they belong.  They were not the most cooperative; even though, they had no reason to be out when it was snowing and there was plenty of hay in the field…there was no grass outside where they were!  What a great start to my week.  Thanks to that, it’s Wednesday and I have literally no idea what to do for this next lab (not like I would anyway).  So I’m glad it’s almost the end of the semester and I have an "A" so far because this is not going to go well.  This may be on the same level as the addition lab (Which I skipped); we’ll see.  Anyway, I’m just incredibly ready to be done with this semester! Break can not come fast enough.  I still have a Communications speech to write and a couple group assignments to do.  Ugh, this is ridiculous.

I’ve been researching possible equine internship opportunities for next summer and let me tell you, there are some incredible ones out there!  There are internships for all disciplines and I don't know which one I want to intern in first!  I’m in the process of putting an application together for one right now.  It’s exciting yet nerve wracking to think about interning in the future.  Many of the internships available are quite far from home so I would be leaving my horses for an entire summer without me. :O  I’m already considering my options of what to do with them during the time I’ll be gone.  Thinking about this stuff has gotten me all excited and nervous at the same time…and I haven’t even specifically chosen an internship yet.  Next year is going to be a fun year filled with adventures; I can feel it already.

First Time at Quarter Horse Congress

On Sunday October 12^th I went to Quarter Horse Congress for the first time with my mom, brother, and sister.  I know, it’s amazing…I’m 18 and have had horses forever and have never been to Congress.  Crazy, right?  So we get there and it’s incredible how much stuff there is there!  We spent over 2 hours in the Bricker building alone just looking at all the shops in there.  I can’t believe how expensive some of the stuff is! Like seriously, who needs a $4,000 shirt or an $18,000 saddle?!  We also went and watched the hunters over fences…if that’s not the biggest disgrace on the planet I don’t know what is.  Those horses literally loped around a course of fences and hopped over them.  They didn’t have any forward motion, no form over fences, and no lead changes!! How in the world can they even dare to call themselves “hunters?!”  I could only watch about 10 of those awful horses before going and watching about 20 minutes of the halter mares class.  Some of those horses are incredible!  It was a pretty fun day.  I got to see new things and experience this new event. 

King's Island

On Saturday October 11^th I went with the Reality Farms Equestrian Team to King’s Island for the Halloween theme it has.  We got there around 6:00 and went through almost all the haunted houses they had set up.  The only one that was truly scary to me was the hospital themed one because I’m really not into the reality of that scene; it’s just a little too creepy for me!  My friend and I did get on one roller coaster, the Blue Racer.  She’s not a big fan of roller coasters so we did a little one.  Even that one was scary to her!  It was still fun.  We spent all night at the amusement park and didn’t leave till almost 1am.  It was so much fun!  I didn’t even get back home until 3am but the lack of sleep was totally worth it. Haha  

And here's a picture of the little psycho!

New mare has some interesting issues.  I spent probably half an hour brushing burrs out of her mane and tail and put her in the stall while I gave a riding lesson.  When I came back I pulled her out of the stall and put her back into the crossties and resumed grooming her.  Another five minutes later she has a sudden meltdown and rears up and jerks back breaking one side of my crossties.  I’m amazed I didn’t get kicked by her explosion since I was brushing a front leg at the time of the episode.  I have no idea what sparked her sudden freak-out but needless to say I’m not happy about it.  Where in the world did that come from?!  Well, looks like this mare is going to need a lot more work than I thought!  You’d think a horse who received “professional training” years ago wouldn’t be such a psycho.  That trainer needs fired….

Well  I went and picked up a new horse for training today. She’s a cute little 15hh Quarter mare. Her name is "Kisses" so I'm going to make her show name "Kiss my Sass." She's a total mess; she’s covered in burrs and dirt. It’ll take a while to get her all cleaned up! She’s been trained in showmanship and I’m going to put her into western pleasure style riding. She needs a lot of work! She doesn’t load AT ALL (she was a total monster!) so that is going to have to change! I’m hoping this mare will come around and be a nice project for me, though. Fingers crossed.

Costume freestyle reining class at the fair this year. Took first!

GORGEOUS sunset over the barn tonight as I rode my hunter mare!

                                                     Bonfire night with my boyfriend. :)

                                          It was a beautiful day at Muskingum University!

I worked with Storm over fences yesterday.  Set up some more frightening fences for him to work on his bravery and he did great.  He didn’t even balk at the corner fence (a barrel with two poles coming off of it sitting on cones), which I thought he’d try to refuse!  He looked at it and sailed right over without a second thought leaving room to spare.

As he got tired, he got lazy and tapped fences and rushed fences, etc.  So I know now what I need to work on.  I need to take a break from jumping and work on flatwork to get him to use himself better!  Maybe then he’ll do much better with being round and consistent.  And finally, I need to work him on getting flying lead changes.  He definitely needs more hind end.        

Trail Ridin'

Had a really nice trail ride with this mare today.