Hi all. Ashke has been moved to a farm in Kansas, due to the rising costs of horse boarding in my area, and his ongoing lameness issue with his right front. He is on 18 acres of pasture with three other horses. He seems happy and was not all that excited to see me the last time I visited him. I'm going to leave the blog published, but this will be my last entry ..read more

  So, five weeks ago, four days before our schooling show, at the end of my lesson as I was untacking, this happened: The bit fell apart at the cheek piece.   The end piece that fitted through the cheek piece rusted out completely. This is the end that was inside the cheek piece. I figure it must have been made of sweet iron and it rusted out on the end that he sucks against the side of his mouth.  I contacted the manufacture and was told it was normal wear and tear. I pushed back on that and the woman I was working with talked to the owner. They said they could fix it an ..read more

 The last time we showed in Working Equitation was June of 2019. It rained all weekend, so the show was inside. Ashke had just started getting injections for his hocks and although our dressage was okay, his behavior in the EOH was atrocious on the second day. I came away from that show having made the decision we were hanging up the effort for good. I stress too much about our performance and he really only wants to do speed all the time. It just wasn't fun. And since my last show was also on the same day that my divorce was final, I wasn't sure what my financial outlook was going to be ..read more

 Wow. it's been a long time since I posted and so much has happened that it might be a book to detail all of the things that have been going on . . . . that said, this is a story about Ashke. We started working on flying changes in December of 2018 and Ashke has shown moments of brilliance, but less of consistency. His issue has been from the change from his right lead to the left. From left to right, he is flawless and it takes just a slight shift and bump on the rein to execute, but in the other direction, he can be half a step off behind. We had reached a point where he was getting it ..read more

 I got to practice my dressage test this last weekend and although I went off course at the first walk pirouette, I thought we had made a marked improvement. Below you will find the last test I rode in a show and below that the test I rode on Saturday. The dressage test from the June show (Jill Barron, judge) February 6, 2021 ..read more

 OMG, this was the best move to date. I love this barn.  We moved in on 12/26. I needed to be able to ride without worrying about concrete footings, icy roads, and moving holiday blow up decorations (the new little gypsy cob Amanda is working with tried to destroy one of them - she be fierce). The move was fairly easy and we got the horses out to ride the day we moved in.   The stall is big - 16 x 16 - and kept very clean. They go into turn out from about 6 am until 1 pm. Ashke is in a single run turn out, since he plays way to hard with the boys. We are going to try and find a ..read more

 So, when we moved from Owen's we had two barns that we really looked at. One was a big facility, just having gone under new management, with two big outdoor arenas and a huge indoor. The stalling option was a run with a shed or inside in a box stall. That barn was big, with lots of horses and riders, very often busy with five trainers. The huge drawback was we were told that Amanda wouldn't be able to train us until one or two of the other trainers left. And there were only five spaces available. The second barn gave us the opportunity to have all of the horses in one barn, with a huge ..read more

 So, when shit hits the fan, all you can do is duck or move out of the way . . .  I have been taking lessons on Thursday night for several years now. Sometimes it moves to Tuesday or Wednesday, but we always gravitate back to Thursday. I have been riding with one of my barn mates and sharing lessons with her, because we are both working on the same things. It gives the horses a break between pirouettes and half-pass and sometimes you can figure things out by watching them in front of you. The barn we were boarding in had a huge indoor arena with decent footing and horrible lighting ..read more

 After the trip to Diamond Lake, I was bit by the backpacking bug. However, there was no way I was going to be carrying 40+ pounds on my back up big mountains any more. The pack I was using was purchased in 1997, had an external frame, was heavy and didn't really fit any more. The tent weighed almost nine pounds, the camp stove was white gas and weighed almost 4 lbs. Things just needed to change. So, for my birthday, I gave myself a new outfit.    This is the Osprey Rook 65. Empty, it weighs 3.52 lbs and the sales person at REI helped me get it fitted properly to my torso. I o ..read more

To make sense of this week, we need to go back in time and expand on some items. In June of 2018, due to a series of unfortunate decisions on the part of our "old" barn owner, I moved barns. I moved to a barn almost 40 minutes away for a couple of reasons: 1) Amanda moved herself and her students to the new barn, and 2) we were having feed quality issues with the old barn and Ashke was losing weight. There was the additional benefit of having the barn two minutes from where Amanda lived (for blanketing, night checks on sick horses, checking on them when there were fireworks) and at the time we ..read more