So intermediate camp was last week and it went fine. I’m getting a little ‘camped out’ by now–I have never aspired to be a babysitter or teacher for good reason…and while there are, of course, horses involved at horse camp, it’s getting a little old. There is supposed to be a ‘Christian’ horse camp in a couple of weeks and a boys camp later on in the summer but honestly, I’m kind of hoping they get canceled. Neither of those sound like anything I will enjoy–hopefully my boss has her baby soon and we don’t have to do them! (There’s no way in hell I’m doing them alone.) But I won’t dwell on camp, I’ve got more interesting things to talk about.

First of all, the new training horse!

She is a big, beautiful warmblood mare (a Hanoverian cross, I think). She’s actually seventeen years old, but I cannot believe that she is so close in age to Fim. It’s amazing what a pampered life does for a horse….this girl looks like she’s about five. She’s a dressage horse, her owner has had her for ten years (and sadly has decided to sell her, so the horse is in our ‘training to sell’ program) and has shown her, I believe, at 1st level and done well.

A couple of training horses ago, we had this little buckskin AQHA mare that had hardly been handled, much less ridden, and by the time she went home after 60 days of training, she was well on her way to being an excellent trail horse. She was definitely on the skittish, rather unpredictable side, but I never felt afraid of her….

However, this new horse intimidates me big time. I have ridden her a couple of times since she arrived a week and a half ago, and they have been well enough rides, but there have also been a couple of occasions where she was so wound up that I haven’t been able to work up the nerve to get on her. The times I have ridden her she has been just fine for grooming, tacking up, etc. The times I haven’t she was tossing her head as I led her in to the barn, swinging her hindquarters around wildly without any respect for my space (and no care as she knocked into me), making tacking up impossible, with no inclination of willingness to do as I asked. Bipolar? Maybe. The difference between the good and the bad is so profound. With any other horse, on the bad days, I would have just herded her into the arena and free lunged the crap out of her until she was willing to re-negotiate, however this horse has had so many leg injuries that her owner insists she only be worked while wearing protective boots on all four legs. Let’s just say, on the bad days, the challenge of getting near her legs to velcro on some boots without being squashed seemed a little too daunting for an $8 an hour job. (Of course, later on my boss tells me that on a day this horse was acting up with her, she did lunge her sans boots. Oh well. At least I know for next time, and it’s nice to know that it’s not just me that experiences her moodiness.)

Isn’t she pretty? I like her big, pointy ears. She’s a really graceful mover. 

So anyways, apart from her raging mood swings, I am excited to ride this horse that can probably teach me a ton about dressage. However, I am incredibly intimidated to work with her on my own…and I think she is the first horse who I’ve actually been scared to work with. I feel that either she’s going to knock me down and kill me, or if I actually get on her, that I’m going to wreck all the hard work her owner put into her because, let’s face it, I don’t know that much about dressage just yet! But tonight I’m meeting with my boss for a lesson of sorts on this horse so let’s just hope that gives me a much needed confidence boost and that neither of my nervous scenarios play out.

Also….

Gunner! My friend trailered her horse, Nora, over to our place this past weekend and we took the two of them for a long, fun ride. It’s amazing how much Gunner mirrors my personality…when we are distracted by our riding companions, nothing can phase us. When we are alone, everything is a challenge. It’s not that he’s unwilling to ride out alone, it’s just that without a positive distraction (another horse), everything turns into a negative distraction. We saw herons, deer, flushed several birds (which has in the past been my ‘get dumped and watch Gunner’s big spotted butt running for home from the dirt’ sentence), rode through grass that brushed my stirrups for a good mile, and had not one single issue. Had we gone out on our own, I’d probably be laying on the couch with an ice pack on some part of my body right now.

Gunner and I are so similar and have such a connection that I can’t help but think having my friend along on our trail ride really affected his performance as well. I was distracted from the negative distractions and wasn’t waiting for and expecting any challenges to pop up and prepare for as usual. I guess I didn’t realize that I had been intimidated by Gunner lately until I stopped on Saturday.

It’s amazing how much nerves can affect our performances as riders and the good that we can get out of our steeds. A little bit of trust goes a long ways, especially with a horse like Gunner that really does deserve it. When the crazy heat lets up later this week, I am planning to take Mr. Gonna Be a Good Somebody out for another long ride and just…relax the whole time. It’ll be interested to put my theory to the test!

I don’t think I was the kid who asked for a pony every year for Christmas because I knew I wouldn’t get one and didn’t want to be disappointed. But I got plenty of horse related things and if you knew me, it was no secret I was a ‘horse girl’!

I was lucky to have a friend in junior high whose family had horses and we spent hours riding those poor things all over the place. I remember riding down country roads to the lake and cantering down trails, doing all kinds of things our parents would probably be greatly displeased to know! But we were young, dumb and brave and her horses always took care of us. (Well actually she fell off one of her dad’s horses, dislocated her shoulder, got a concussion and as we got older became absolutely unbearable. I remember her horse accident being the mark on our friendship timeline where everything went downhill. Always wear a helmet! lol.)

After she and I drifted apart and I became interested in boys (I met my husband Joe when we were in junior high and we started dating when I was 14!), my horse-girlness was suppressed because it was uncool and also because I had no horsey-connections…

We finished highschool and Joe, my husband, went off to college to become a computer programmer and I went to school in Minneapolis to become a hairstylist. My program was only a year and I lived at home for a while working in the town just north of where my parents lived and eventually followed Joe to St. Joseph where I found a great job at a salon and we eventually got an apartment together. His college years were awesome, we met fantastic people who I love dearly and made all kinds of wonderful memories. When he finished school, he got offered a great job here in Owatonna, three or so hours from where we lived and needless to say, I wasn’t willing to commute from St. Joe to here so I had to quit my job.

So we packed up and moved down here to a great little duplex a week before our wedding. I didn’t have plans for my income yet but Joe was my biggest supporter of chasing my dreams of self-employment and working as an artist. The first month or two I struggled to find my niche and eventually discovered I could make a mean apron and that people actually wanted to buy them! It was so fun to sell my first item on etsy and imagine my products hanging in someone’s kitchen. So I’ve basically spent the past year making aprons and selling them online and at the farmer’s market here and eventually got a deal with a restaurant in DC making their uniforms. I’m still shocked that people want to own things that I make but it definitely makes me feel good. More recently I’ve taken on a fun project–a wedding dress and five bridesmaid dresses and that has been fun and stressful and I don’t know if I’ll do it again but it’s been a fun experience if nothing else!

Joe and I bought our farm in November and in case you don’t know, owning a home is crazy expensive. At first, we were making it just fine with his income and my supplemental income, but when the site I used that brought in about 90% of my income closed down a couple months ago, we were hurting for some extra breathing room in our budget. Luckily for me, my friend was looking for someone to help her train and give lessons because she is having a baby this summer. So now, not only do I get to design things and sell them, I get to work with horses too! I’m truly blessed and I don’t know what I did to deserve the great life I have but I’m so grateful!

But more relevant to my blog, is how I got back into horses…

The duplex we lived in before we bought our farm was only a few blocks from the county fairgrounds. This past summer I spent a week wandering the horse barns and watching classes and realizing my long suppressed love of horses once again. I knew at the end of that week that I didn’t just want, I NEEDED to get back into horses and so I started taking lesson with my now boss at the end of last summer. In that time, I read every horse book cover to cover that our library had to offer (some of which I had already read as a ten year old!)  and for a while, I took weekly lessons and then eventually started working for extra riding time.

Around Christmas, I met Gunner who had been brought to the barn to be sold and fell in love. I can’t imagine how much I talked about him and lamented at someone else owning him, but it must have been a lot because my darling Joe secretly bought him for me the week or so before the holiday and only managed to make it to about three days before Christmas until he couldn’t hold in his wonderful secret anymore and had me close my eyes and handed Gunner’s lead rope to me. So for the next few months I traded work for board and then in the spring began looking for a horse that I would purchase to keep Gunner company when I brought him home and that’s when I found Fim!

So as you can see, I’ve only been a full out horse crazy girl again for less than a year. I’m pretty lucky that so far most of my training work has been starting young horses, which doesn’t require me to have experience in showing just yet (which I will be getting this summer, showing Fred for my boss and probably Gunner in open shows this season) or an absolute perfect seat just yet.

Let me be honest with you, I post on the correct diagonal like… half the time and I can’t keep my damn fingers closed on the reins for the life of me. Yes, I’m the first to admit, with how much I ride everyday I should probably be a much better rider than I am, but if you saw me try to dance, you’d understand that you can’t teach someone like me rhythm! Everything in time, I guess! Anyways, while I work to become a better rider, I’m having fun learning about training and patiently starting young horses, and just soaking up horsey goodness like a gigantic sponge.

So that’s my past few years, shortened up for you. I went from being a hairstylist in an apartment spending my weekends with friends in bars to an utterly penniless but utterly happy girl living my childhood dreams. I look forward to documenting my (hopeful)  improvement as a rider and sharing stories about the horses that teach me as I teach them!