If we're friends on social media, you probably saw that I spent the last week in Canada - I'm flying home today ðŸ˜
After spending #magicalponyclubweekend in Reno with two of my favorite bloggers, we had a #magicalponyclubweekend2.0 this last April that I didn't really end up blogging about because I suck lol. Suffice to say, we went on lots of adventures with the dramatic Spanish mares and had fun, then went to not-Rolex and had even MORE fun!
We decided it was time to do it again - but in Canada! While we were there, Renate surprised us with a #weirdinternetfriends photoshoot and the results are just so ridiculously wonderful I couldn't help but share! Since this blog is the whole reason I met these two wonderful ladies, it seemed fitting ♥️
We took serious photos
We took some silly photos
Lots of laughter
And even more goofing off
So much silliness (T and Lurch were not injured in the taking of this photo, promise, haha)
Naturally the horses and dogs wanted to be involved
Very involved. Peep my buddy Tripp the tiny yak and his adorable ears!
The photographer asked us to tell her our funniest moment as friends and it had literally happened that morning 🤣
This was the sneak peek she posted a few days after the shoot and we were IMMEDIATELY OBSESSED
Without any coordination on our part, we all wore Free Ride Equestrian breeches 🤣 they should sponsor us lolol. Or any of the country boot makers lol.
I cannot overstate how beautiful Renate's place is! She has this lovely mural on the side of her barn which made for a stunning backdrop
Of all the weird things I've found on the internet, these ladies are some of my favorite ♥️
All photos by Wispy Wings Photography - https://www.wispywings.ca/
Ughhhh yes I am alive. Things are ticking along with the horses and I am completely chaotically overwhelmed (in a mostly good way?) at work. I am sneaking in lessons when I can, lots of hacking on the trails, and then everyone was off most of last week because.....
Fucking WHY
It is patently unfair that we have "feels like 144" in the same state that we get thundersnow/2' of snow/-50 windchills 🥴 I'll take real winter or real summer please, but NOT BOTH. Jack really struggled towards the end of the week, and his anhydrosis flared up for the first time in like 6 years. I think we're over the worst of it, but he's going back on SweatAgain and we're keeping a close eye on him.
Penny photo because I can
Also broke down and replaced this helmet which was.... Probably 6 years old 🙈
Anyway. The heat finally broke over the weekend. And thank god! Snuck in a lesson yesterday, I have my biggest week of the year at work this week, and then Saturday I am taking off on a long overdue vacation 🥳 DH will be holding down the fort while adjusting to starting a new job on Friday, lol. Our timing is always... Impeccable?
In another episode of "you can't make this shit up", I am apparently now horrifyingly allergic to any and all stinging insects. About a month ago, I got stung on the crown of my head by a wasp putting feed in the chicken coop, thankfully on a weekend. I woke up with my face progressively more swollen for three days in a row, but after mainlining antihistamines, it mostly resolved.
That brings us to the weekend before last - I was doing chores when I felt something sting my arm. I registered it and brushed it off, and went about my business (running water over the sting while I filled water buckets). By the time I went inside to shower off the grime, I was feeling a little queasy and itchy, but I chalked it up to the heat and dirt. It was not that 🥴 luckily I had the foresight to pop two benadryl before getting in the shower.
By the time I got out of the shower, my entire body below my neck was covered in hives and I was incredibly nauseous. My lips were tingling and I couldn't feel my hands, so I went to find DH to drive me to the nearest ER - which just so happens to be 40+ minutes away, since our local hospital closed.
One of the few "safe for the internet" shots
By the time we got there I felt like my throat was closing - whether that was the anaphylaxis or whether it was just panic about the whole situation, I have no idea, but they bumped me to the front of triage, took one look at me, and immediately threw more antihistamines and steroids at me. Once it because clear I wasn't actually going to die and the drugs were doing their job, they sent me home with a script for an EpiPen.
My husband kept telling me my face was swollen. After like the 8th time he said it I was no longer amused.
These cost THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS ðŸ«
I already had an appointment set with my primary care doctor next month, so I'm supposed to talk it over with her and get a more permanent script for the EpiPen, but any time I use it I still have to go to the ER so this allergy is going to be very expensive 🥴
I bought a case to carry it in my purse, and have already warned my trail riding friends they might need to stab the shit out of me if we come across anything that stings on the trail - and there are emergency antihistamines and steroids in the bag, along with a device to suck venom out courtesy of DH (true love lol). He is on a mission to eradicate any nests we can find, starting with the bees in the flower bed in front of the barn that caused this.
So.... Yay? I wanted to write a more upbeat post about all the good riding and the great work accomplishments and everything else fun going on, but the near death experience sort of took precedence I guess 🙃
I barely have time to throw my thoughts to paper (metaphorically, since this is online haha) but I just wanted to say I had a lesson with Emmy yesterday (OMG SO HOT) but it was AMAZING.
It's been tricky to get in for lessons lately - my trainer has clients at shows/hosts clinics that are outside my tax bracket (lol) on a LOT of weekends, so I went to some lengths I maybe wouldn't normally go through to lesson because I haven't been there in like a month. Including dealing with a midday lesson when it was like 97 degrees 🥵
I took Emmy, and she was A ROCK STAR. I had been having a little trouble with the canter at home, and my farrier had tweaked her front shoes a bit at her last appointment, because she had some compensation spots in the hoof he wanted to address. Starting to think it's my footing at home that she objects to, but that's a continued experiment.
We've found that the quality of the trot is much better if we walk warmup and then go straight to canter before we come back to work on the trot, so that's what we started with. I had significantly less trouble keeping her cantering in my trainers footing vs mine, which goes in the data point column. But the theme of today's lesson was emphatically DO LESS THINGS. Emmy is perfectly content to let me work and work and work keeping her doing things, but she is also more than capable of lovely canter on her own if I can just... Stop doing so damn much. This is not news, I've had variations of this lesson before, but hot damn riding Emmy makes it even more crystal clear when I stop doing things and get out of her way how lovely things can be.
Why is one arm high and one arm low? No idea 🤣
I also need to stop trying to make the lateral work happen and just ride forward towards the short end and just casually think move over vs trying to physically pick her up and move her myself 🤣🤣 she can pretzel herself in half if I tell her to and she just sort of shrugs and is like okay if that's what you want, whatever, but she is also absolutely capable of doing things in a correct and lovely way if I just... Ask correctly and stay out of her way. TrainerB wryly commented that I could ask for things wrong 20x and Emmy would just sort of bop along and half-ass do the thing but the minute I asked correctly she's like "yes ma'am sure here's the correct and beautiful thing!". She is quite impressed with Miss Em, I think ♥️ she also commented on how much more relaxed Emmy seemed, and that she was looking very comfortable and better in her musculature. I'm quite pleased, because when Emmy showed up she had some interesting shoes on (to handle the AZ desert rock she came from), was on daily Equioxx, and had required some not insignificant maintenance to remain comfortable in work. In conjunction with my farrier and vets, we decided to take her back to basics and just start fresh and see how she felt - so now she's barefoot in back and in simple plates up front, no Equioxx, and so far (knock on wood) no injections or anything more special than lots of long slow hill work. She has always felt good to me but it definitely helped ease my mind that TrainerB thought she looked comfortable and even and free in her gaits - any crookedness is me, pretzeling myself like a fool up there lol. If we get to a point where Emmy needs anything, she will absolutely get it, but for now, I'm glad she's so happy and comfortable on a pretty simple routine!
It's still wild to me that one day, she's this fancy AF dressage horses, 24 hours after schlepping DH around on a 5 mile trail ride ♥️ how I got so lucky to have TWO mares like this, I will never know, but I am eternally grateful to have them both in my life.
Y'all. I can't even. It has been a goal for ACTUAL YEARS to try to get a schoolmaster on lease, even if only for a summer, to lesson and learn on. With the exception of a pretty well schooled NSH rescue (who by the way just celebrated his 30th birthday and 11 years with his perfect family 🥳), I've owned pretty much exclusively young/project horses. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been able to ride something that knows more than me - living in a perpetual cycle of green horses has been rough. Like don't get me wrong, it's taught me an incredibly valuable school set, and Ruby and I are creeping along at a glacial pace, but I KNEW learning from a horse more educated than me would be so valuable. And somehow, that situation fell into my lap.
She is the best.
I took Emmy out to a lesson with my trainer last weekend, and it was phenomenal. Was it always pretty? Absolutely not. We had a lot of unintentional changes, emphasis on the flying 🤣 my half halt needs to be recalibrated so I don't get lawn darted because homegirl has a GOOD STOP in there. Picking up the right lead is hard - she'd rather counter canter for dayssssss. But wow did I learn so much. And now I know that feeling I am trying to replicate on Ruby. In fact, I went home after the lesson Saturday and DH watched Ruby schooling and commented that her canter looked more like Emmy's than he'd ever seen (which I was actively working on lol).
My trainer asked me what my show plans were for this summer - and I'm not sure I have any, sigh. Wasn't necessarily budgeting for having this many horses and dogs 🙈 I want to show but I don't want to go into debt to do it, and I'm just not sure it's in my budget this year 😠then she asked me what my pie in the sky goals were and it's just..... Leave a horse show NOT in tears sometime? Is that too much to ask for? Apparently 🤣
Ran through basically all of 2nd level at home on my own minus the medium trot - struggling to find different gears in the trot so that's homework.
I don't even know that I have a point really. Just had these lovely photos and some video and I am excited to have Emmy in my life. But simultaneously bummed because money is a thing and I can't take her out there to do ALL THE THINGS.
