A happy boy. October 2021  I guess one of the benefits to not posting for a whole year is getting to do a lot of great transformation posts. These are just so much fun, I can't resist doing a bunch of them! For today, we're just going to stick to looking at Bast's conformation photos from the beginning to now. Since he came directly off the track to me, it's especially fun to track the changes in his body as we've transitioned him from the track to life as sport horse, and finally into competitive dressage. Let's get started! August 2017 (5 Years Old) 1 month post last race ..read more

Spoiler alert: He's doing great! I realized I wrote a lot about myself, Bast, and the dogs in the last post, but I never mentioned Pig! Honestly, I think that's just because I don't have a lot of big accomplishments or goals with him, because he is doing fantastic and features pretty heavily in my daily life. In 2020, Pig continued to struggle to keep muscle tone, energy, and balance. I worried this was due to progression with his neck arthritis, but some blood work showed he had concerningly low selenium levels. After several bouts with tick-borne fevers, we think his aging system is ..read more

Hey, y'all. We're still here. It's been a long time without an update here, and I don't want any of you to think the coyotes got us. Nope, instead life took me offline a bit (in some ways figuratively, in others literally). Anyway, now I find myself in 2022 trying to start over here. It's kinda hard, as you might imagine. I guess I could recap the end of 2020 and all of 2021 here, but that seems a bit wildly ambitious and, perhaps, unnecessary. Though, I'm not sure our story here is quite done being shared, and that requires some catching up. Let's start with the cliffs notes: 1. At ..read more

As you may have guessed from my preferred choice of dog companion, I'm kinda in love coyotes and wolf-like creatures. (PSA. Neither of my dogs has any "wolf blood". They are 100% doggy breeds. They just look and act like wild things, as I prefer it.) "Sister Lyra, we don't look that much like coyotes? Right? Right?!" Due to my long-time love and respect for wild canines, I was really excited when a family of coyotes made a den next door to the farm this spring. Growing up in the Midwest, I'd seen (and heard!) plenty of coyotes. However, coyotes are quite notoriously shy. All my e ..read more

While cleaning off an old storage drive recently, I ran across some old photos taken by Liz of myself and Pig during a 2016 dressage clinic. I'd never edited the raw files, so I thought I'd dig through them. It was so fun to step back in time to Pig and I schooling 3rd/4th. Such a handsome horse. I love him so. It's easy to slip into the belief that I was a better rider back when I was riding more advanced dressage. These photos made me realize that is not true. In many ways, I am a better rider now. My position is more solidly "into" my horse, instead of perching atop him so much. My ..read more

Remember when I told you guys about my insecurities about my goals and my total panic over our upcoming last show of the season? Well, spoiler alert, we survived! Hooray! How's that for the face of survival? Once we safely arrived at the show grounds, my anxiety actually started to drop off. Though I did panic my horse would lame himself pawing the trailer to death when his friend left him to show in two classes in the morning. Eventually my worry turned to annoyance when his banging on the floor would not stop, and he did not lame himself. Our tests were grouped together late in th ..read more

Anyone else freak out a little bit when you're really close to accomplishing a goal? Turns out, I do. It's so rare for things to actually go smoothly for me, I immediately start to panic when an achievement is coming up. I basically expect all the bad luck in the world to rain down on me. Let's face it, that's often what happens. What's it say about my life that a global pandemic isn't the worst luck I've had in the last few years? (Thanks to Emma for coming out to Waredaca and snapping most of the photos in this post!) A lot of times this leads me to keep my goals quiet. If no one kn ..read more

Shows that will be documented here soon, that is. Since I just wrapped them up yesterday! So until I get everything together, enjoy these candid moments from the weekend! In case anyone forgot Bast is barely 15.3. Here's your quarterly reminder that he's smol! We experienced a range of weather for this show weekend. Saturday morning the remnants of Laura rolled through Maryland, bringing stifling humidity, strangely isolated storms, and drenching rain. Loading the trailer that morning, I was completely soaked through in both sweat and rain. So obviously a super pleasant kickoff. The ..read more

The Wednesday before Bast's tragic fly sheet incident, we hauled back to Loch Moy for a schooling show. We needed to run through 1-3 in front of a judge in a real ring, if only so I could be sure I had the geometry remotely correct. I love Loch Moy's Twilight Eventing nights for these sorts of things. There are always a ton of entries, so you get a true show environment exposure. However, it's extremely cheap to run through a dressage test (I think the whole thing set me back $25?), and therefore an opportunity to go work through some things without feeling bad if it all goes downhill. Perfect ..read more

I planned an ambitious show season for these last few months of the 2020 year. Even knowing the schedule planned would be hard, I was looking forward to the hustle and bustle. In a year like this, having something to look forward to is worth attempting. We'd planned to tack on a very small USDF show at a new facility to me. More of this please! Unfortunately Bast heard about our plans, and managed to tangle himself in his fly sheet the day before this show. While it initially seemed he'd escaped his tangle without injury, by late afternoon it became obvious he was in some pain. I inve ..read more