♣Ambitious♣

All things come to an end at some point. This isn't quite the end, but it feels like I've turned to the first page of the last chapter. Last week was my final lesson with the IHSA team. It came after three days of final assignments and exams. On top of that, the past few weeks have been emotionally exhausting. It sucks to say that I was feeling empty when I got picked up and didn't really want to ride at all. We're always given the option to pick the horse for our last ride of the semester. It doesn't always work out how we want, but our Coach does her best to accommodate our desires. Most people had their last lesson on the horse they rode for their first lesson. Y'all know who I rode for my first lesson? Twinkles. No shade to my team's blonde haired beauty, but I still wanted a challenge for my last ride, so I chose Twister. He's the only horse that I had yet to ride for a full lesson, so it felt like a fitting way to close things out. ...

More like the real reason I should do Western Pleasure. I'd venture to say that I'm better off going slow and not jumping things. Since we didn't go to a show today, we, instead, had a show. Miss J and Miss Jan decided to do a mock show for us. We watched all the horses get schooled first by J² and Sam. It seemed that everyone was feeling their oats today, with the exception of Twister and Leo. When it came time to draw names, I got Twister, and I thought myself to be lucky. All I had to worry about was getting her to move forward and not not duck right. Simple. No, not simple, not simple at all. I messed up both warm-up fences because of unclear signals and bad timing. Miss J had us pick a number 1 through 20 to see who would have to do the course first. I picked 16. The number was 17. I hate the number 16 now. The only jump that really bothered me was the first one, a gray wall. Twister took it nicely. We came around and took a left turn to the bending line. The first...

  Ah, yes, it is, in fact, time for change. I forgot to mention in my last post that Thursday was my last lesson on Baby and with Miss S for a while. A local woman has decided to start an IEA team at her barn. Miss S mentioned it to me, and, at first, I simply didn't want to. I'd heard about IEA before and thought it would be a cool thing to do, but I just brushed it off because I thought there was no need to change anything riding wise. Then the texts poured in, and I was sucked into this thing. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to afford riding with Miss S and riding with the team. I actually thought I could for a couple of days, then my dad talked some sense into me, and I picked to ride on the team. It's more expensive, there are shows every month, and the barn is an hour away, but, when opportunity comes knocking, you don't ask it to wait. My first lesson was on Friday. Cas is also on the team, and her mom is my ride for the next couple of months. It's...