♣Ambitious♣

Favorite show picture Favorite non-show picture Favorite thing you bought Breastplate! Favorite moment on horseback No picture, but Liberty giving me a nice canter always makes me feel like I'm on the top of the world. Favorite moment out of the saddle Look at this moth I found. Favorite “between the ears” picture I'm about to take this one out of these annual posts because I just do not take between the ears photos anymore, lol. Here's a favorite from several years ago. Favorite horse book or article I have a couple enjoyable ones. Horse people had a lot to learn this year. 8 Ways to Lose Money Fast in Your Horse Business So You Want To Be An Ally How to Handle Mistakes In Riding Favorite horse ridden (or groomed/cared for) aside from your own Favorite funny picture of your horse Fun Fact: Blackjack had his jaw broken when he was a youngster, and now he drools profusely. Favorite fence that you successfully jumped or movement that you conquered Haven't really jumped or...

This post is just gonna be a summary of the video above. It was easier to speak candidly and get all my thoughts and feelings out before trying to write it down. Usually I'm the other way around, but I guess things change with age. Yesterday was my first time going out to the barn since Lucie died. I had planned to still drop by the Monday after, but I woke up that morning and my whole body disagreed with that idea. I distanced that full week and felt guilty for all of it. Both my trainer and the girl I lease with have to regularly go to the barn for work. I've checked in with both of them, but from what I've been told, neither are moving forward easily. To be quite honest, I am not moping or struggling to get through my day, but every time I think of what happened, my chest gets tight, and I distance again. And I kind of hate the term "moving forward" or "moving on" because I don't like the idea that we're just supposed to move past this, howeve...

I wrote and scheduled this before Lucie passed. Thought about deleting it entirely, but it has good energy, and I need that right now. This is a completely unnecessary post but whaaaa! I wanna baby horsey! I've only hit this point because of a very short conversation that I had with Trainer G about breeding Lucie. Apparently, she considered it after getting ownership, and because there were no horse shows this year, it made sense. Ultimately, she decided to breed her barrel mare, but that doesn't mean that I can't be super obnoxious and make a comprehensive list of every possible, logical match for Miss Lucie. First, let's take a look at the baby mama. Lucie is an 11 year old off-track Thoroughbred . . . and that's all I know, lol. I've never inquired about her race name or competition history. She has done both hunters and jumpers, but I would personally consider her more of a hunter by her movement and attitude. My favorite aspects of Lucie are her bu...

She didn't make it. Her condition was back and forth for the past 24 hours. As we were preparing to put her down, her body gave out. I wish I could say it was a different ending or that she went peacefully, but life doesn't always work out like that. There are a lot of people who loved this horse. I appreciate not having to go through this situation alone.

The weather is just . . . thoroughly not on my side. We've officially hit the time of year where it's either blazing hot or pouring. I am slowly getting used to it, and I've made a commitment to go to the barn every day after work at least to see all the horses and do some handywork. My hours are going up in the fall to 24 per week instead of 16, and after talking to my boss, he's said that I can just start working more hours now. We have at least one big project that'll be moving forward and potentially another multi-million dollar project if we can get the numbers to work. Fingers, toes, eyes, and stars are crossed! Needless to say, Lucie hasn't been getting as much time out of the stall. I know she's still in lessons right now, but she's only used for up-downers doing basic stuff. Outside of me and her other leaser, no one rides her seriously, and apparently her other leaser also hasn't been riding much lately. Again, the weather. With all this ...

Am I nearly half a month late on this? Absolutely. Are we gonna talk about that? Absolutely not.

In a strange twist of events, spending more days at work did eventually lead to more barn time. I'm still putting in more hours in order to get a project to the next level, it's no more than nine in one day (as opposed to, like, 12 several days in a row). My free time got extended even more due to the fact that it's now too damn hot to ride (seriously Florida??? It's hurricane season! Give me a threatening cloud and a nice breeze!). To be quite honest, I haven't ridden that much this month at all, so June's vlog is going to be a lot of talking heads. Big mare says "Leave me alone" Yesterday, I decided to try for my first ride in a while. When I got there, the weather wasn't bad, and there was a slight breeze, so I started to tack up. I had a plan to do real work, and considered doing some low cross rails but nixed the idea because my muscle tone likely isn't there right now. As I was tacking up, one of the younger boarders was out and me...

Started off the month a little worried, but Lucie's feet are now looking great! I do like the conditioner, and a little has gone a long way. I must admit that I've been lazier in May about working out, but it's showing in my riding, therefore it's time for me to get back in shape.

Lucie is still not quite right in the back end, so my trainer has said to give her a full week off with no work to see if whatever is going on works itself out. What's funny is that when I went out to see her earlier this week, she was practicing her cutting skills on her pasture mate. Odds of an abscess? Slim. Odds of her just running around like a gaunt idiot on four feet of thrush? Favorable. Eh, just gonna wait and see. I've been hand grazing her and putting conditioner on her feet as needed. We both seem to enjoy it. Looking for snacks in the poop pile That being said, I've been trying to . . . force myself to ride. For some reason, my motivation has gone down a lot. I never really felt okay after my last lesson since it didn't go too well. That compounded on top of school and work, and I just kind of sputtered out a bit. I was still going to the barn, just not riding. I forced myself to get on Molly since I'm allowed to ride her whenever Lucie isn't availa...

Lucie has kind of been off and on this past month. Over the past three weeks, she's started rushing at the canter and is stiffer than usual in her hind end. The exact cause of the stiffness hasn't been confirmed yet, but it could be a number of factors including her bedding, an abscess, and thrush. Yeah, you read that right, thrush . The horse with dry, cracking feet got thrush . And it smells god awful. It's just about cleared up, and fortunately the hoof conditioner that I bought is also antimicrobial. I've been applying it to the underside of the foot for two weeks, and it's clearing up, but I'm still flabbergasted as to how it happened in the first place. Queen of causing really weird problems All that being said, she hasn't had much riding time lately, which means a lot more time inside, so I'm guessing the stiffness is due to the circumstances. Plus, I have no idea how to manage an abscess. Let's hope there isn't one to begin with. ...

From the beginning of the year, feeling stressed but not yet quarantine stressed.

Quarantine has made a minimal change in my routine for the past few weeks. I'm already a sedentary person and tend to spend most if not all of my free time at home, in my room, completely away from society. My job (though non-essential) does not yet have the ability to let me work from home, plus our IT guy has been elusive as of late. Outside of work though? Nothing in my life requires me to leave the house at the moment. And on god, I am losing my damn mind. See, my "sedentary" lifestyle is more of a bug than a feature. I thrive off of having a set schedule with obligations that have consequences when ignored. Issue is . . . I need other people to establish those consequences. I'm so friggen bored and exhausted sitting in my house and felt another wave of depression coming on until my body just flipped a switch and refused to let that happen. You wanna know what I did this morning? Woke up at a reasonable time, brushed my teeth, laid down again to answer som...

Seems we're off to an interesting start in 2020. After two weeks of an intense design competition, several more weeks of playing catch up in my other classes, an emotional mid term presentation, very little riding time, and an entire paper written within three hours, classes will now be online for the rest of the semester. I have no idea how (or if) this is going to work. Good thing that ain't my job! Ok, but seriously, this semester has been a whirlwind, and I hadn't seen much of Lucie until this week since we are currently on spring break. We also got new footing in the arena! Which means my dry footed Thoroughbred will no longer have to deal with stepping on rocks! It still needs to be spread out though, so I took that as a sign that we should take on the trails in the neighborhood. she luv durt Too bad Lucie . . . does not like trails. She's generally level headed with a couple of hot moments. Ya know, like a normal horse. She could never be classified as ...

I've been very timidly stepping back into jumping with Lucie. Why? Because I'm timid. In my defense, her fitness was still needing work, and it made no sense to start jumping if I didn't feel great about her flatwork. At this point, she's trimmed up a touch (though I will always call her Tubby) and started working the right muscles. We started over small stuff for quite a few rides, just x rails and super tiny verticals. I didn't measure anything, but I doubt we got higher than 18". She's kind of a weird jumper in that she doesn't put any effort into the approach, can't be bothered to pick up her feet consistently, and barely holds herself together with the getaway, but she pushes off with a considerable amount of power over every jump. If I were more physically fit with even an ounce of core strength, this wouldn't be an issue, but I am not physically fit and have only half an ounce of core strength. Two pointing at the start of my rides...

It's nearly impossible for me to not compare Lucie to Summer. They're both mares. They're both gray. Both did A circuit shenanigans. They both tend to not really give a shit about anything happening around them. And they both canter like they have 12 legs. Okay, maybe that's a bit dramatic, but when I ride Lucie, I repeat what Coach S told me about Summer: "She's big, and she's long, and she's just a lot of horse." The intensity of the semester has kept me from being super consistent, but I try to leg her up once per week. Because she's large, out of shape, and generally sluggish, our warmup has become much more structured to get her loose and moving off my aids. One of the most useful things has actually been starting my ride in two point. I think she appreciates having me off her back and with no contact to just do whatever she wants for the first bit of our ride. Even when I stop two pointing and go to rising trot, I keep the reins l...

We're coming up to two months with Miss Lucie, so I figured it was time to actually delve in and share more about her. The obvious: she's a mare, she's gray, and she's huge. Basically Summer with tinier legs. She also rides pretty similar to Summer as well despite being a touch dead to my leg. Her walk and trot are pretty consistent. I could definitely get a bigger step out of her at both gaits, but she's starting to get a lot softer in her mouth. The BO also mentioned that she tends to get stiff behind, but the more consistently she's taken out, the better she gets. I've introduced polework and a lot of direction changes as well, and that seems to have her moving more energetically with a lot less influence from me. Her canter is . . . a trip. She hasn't been consistent, although part of that is likely due to stiffness, being out of shape, and getting kicked the second week I went out to ride her. Her canter is where she gets more like Summer ...

Cheers to a year of monthly videos! I actually like this format and will likely continue with it for as long as its remains convenient. September was my first month with Lucie, but I didn't get a lot of our rides on video, so this month you get to meet her neighbor, Molly.