November is the beginning of winter here in Vermont and things slowed down for us on the Equestrian front, but we still did a few things. First up was another day of foxhunting. With it no longer being Halloween, I had to dress (at least somewhat) like a foxhunter. Our hunt is a bit casual, but they do wear jackets. When we were moving, I sold a lot of my excess equestrian apparel. I had both a Kerrits and a AA black jacket and couldn’t imagine why I’d need two black jackets since I mostly show in the primavera AA jacket anyway. I kept the black AA in case I ever went to a hunter show, but sol ..read more

Our next event in October was the closing event for Area 1 at Hitching Post. I’d only been doing schooling events all year, so I actually had to renew my member ship for this one and only event. Dressage at Hitching Post is set up with the warm up ring in a field above the dressage rings, which are down in an isolated little pocket surrounded by trees. Horses have to go through a long tree lined lane to get down to the rings and I’ve seen many balk at doing so and I even had to lead one down once when taking pictures. Because my husband and I were in the same division and our times were separa ..read more

October started out with a trail ride at Billings National Park. We rode all through the park and then down to the farmer’s market to get lunch (and some apples for the ponies). Then we did a 2 day clinic with Eric Smiley. The first day was a joint stadium lesson, which went really well. Eric is a big proponent of the good forward and don’t fuss with the horse methodology. The next day we had back to back private dressage lessons in the morning. The morning started off ridiculously foggy, but it made for a unique lesson. By the afternoon, the fog had burnt off and we were back for a group XC ..read more

This blog hop was both a fun trip down memory lane and a real challenge at time. Some years were easy to pick one picture from, other years, not so much. I thought it would make a great last post of the decade. 2010 We were still living in NJ and not owning horses. At the beginning of the year, I wasn’t riding and my – then boyfriend and now – husband had never ridden. He starting riding because we were planning to go on a pack trip in Colorado and he wanted to be prepared. He took one lesson, got hooked, and the next day was calling around to sign up for a second lesson a week. The rest is hi ..read more

September was a super busy month for us. We were out and about every weekend. The first weekend, we went to a halloween themed trail class. I don’t know why it was halloween themed at the beginning of September, but it was really cute. The obstacles were really challenging too. Since we’d never done a teeter-totter before, I started off with an in-hand round. Levi was completely unconcerned with the teeter-tooter or any of the other obstacles. My husband started out with a ridden round on Eugene. Eugene thought the tricky obstacles were easy (he marched right over the teeter-totter and jumped ..read more

It’s that time of year again: The 2019 Equestrian Blogger Gift Exchange! I feel like every year the gifts just keep on getting better and better. Maybe it’s because we horse bloggers learn more about each other over the years. This year, my gifter was Shelby of the blog EquiNovice and she really knocked it out of the park. To start with, she sent me an entire box full of stuff! And she wrapped all of it really nicely. I wish I were so nice to my giftees. I literally just shoved mine in a box with some paper this year. I feel bad now. I especially love the equestrian wrapping paper. Look how ..read more

Before I get to actual August events, I forgot to mention one of the fun things I did in June. June! Apparently, not blogging regularly makes it impossible for me to remember anything I did in the past. I met up with Beljoeor  and got to ride Tristan. Tristan was not impressed We also went up to Burlington to go to a quilt festival, which was really cool. Sometime back in the spring I won a saddle cover from Beljoeor and she generously offered to let me give away a logo saddle cover on my blog. Unfortunately, I then fell off the blogger bandwagon and never did that. So now I’m trying to catc ..read more

July started off with my friend (who I’ve been friends with since nursery school) coming to visit with her husband and little girls. Unfortunately, it was off the wall hot and we don’t have air conditioning so it was rather miserable. But, on the plus side, the girls have been taking riding lessons at home and were excited to ride our horses. Our best friends-and-family horses are both retired due to injury, but they’re both approved for light riding so Shasta and Nilla got returned to work.   View this post on Instagram   This week, we got both the lame mostly-retired mares out for s ..read more

  I know, I know; it’s been… a while. I’ve been having a hard time feeling motivated to blog, but I have had a lot of requests that I do so. As I’ve always hated it when blogs I like reading went away or switched over to just Instagram, I’m going to try to not do that. While I posted a few DIYs over the summer, I haven’t blogged about what we’ve been doing since May. And that’s a shame because we’ve been doing a LOT. Not this… but this is kinda what Levi looks like right now June In June my husband competed in the GMHA Spring HT with Eugene. Because we’d had so much time off over the winter ..read more

My husband really likes keeping his horses’ manes long. Although Mustangs don’t have a true breed standard, most people tend to keep their Mustangs’ manes long as well as it’s closer to their “wild” state. However, the long mane doesn’t really go with formal English horse showing. In the beginning I did running braids, but I hate how they tend to fall out, even if I french braid it. Falling out The other style I’ve used is the lattice braid. This looks pretty cool, but it’s not really a “braid” and not typical for English shows. Lattice Braid What we’ve been doing for the last few years is ru ..read more