Bits and Pieces

How on Earth is it February already! 2018 seemed to go by quickly but it's got nothing on 2019 so far! Every time I blink it seems like another week has flown by and I can't seem to ever catch up on things like cleaning or blogging.

Life and riding continue to tick along though. I sometimes intentionally put the blog on the back burner because I get concerned with privacy and sharing my story to a public audience, those worries don't go away completely but I do want to keep this blog up for the following reasons:
1. I love reading other blogs and feel like having my own blog keeps me more a part of the blogging community even if it's only in a small way. I know I don't comment often but for all of you that I follow, please keep writing, you have taught and inspired me so much.
2. I like having a record of major horse events and also insights into my frame of mind at different points
3. Blogging encourages me to grow as a rider and a horsewoman. This is huge. Since I started blogging 3 years ago I have become so much more involved in the sport of dressage, more thinking in my approaches to everything horse related, so much more conscious of myself as a rider. I don't fully understand the correlation between my growth and my blogging, some is accountability but I think a large part is that writing blog posts forces me to actively organize my thoughts and goals instead of just having them simmer on a back burner of my mind. Whatever the reason, I want to continue growing and I want to continue blogging.

One thing that sometimes hurts my blogging is media, or lack thereof. Often I will start writing a post but if I don't have media or haven't had time to upload pictures or video, I won't finish/publish the post and then it sits in my drafts folder until it becomes no longer relevant and dies. I know that media is great, but it's not necessary for my goals for blogging above (note that building a large following is not one of them) so I'm going to stop caring about it. I'm sorry to you as the reader if you get more walls of text or outdated media. I will still try to post photos, but they might be older or less related. Just curious, what are your thoughts as a blog reader? Is written content or visual media more important?

So, what's been going on with me and Kachina for the last couple months? I will hopefully expand upon some of these thoughts in future posts, but as a quick summary:

Clip - Kachina was clipped for the first time (ever in her life) in January. I outsourced that job to an experienced clipper at my barn. Kachina was reportedly quite well behaved but was getting impatient so she just got the Plan B bib clip instead of the trace clip that was Plan A (I talked to clipper in advance and let her know Kachina's history etc. and good experience trumped nice clip so just to do what she could). We can still extend the clip if we need to but just the bib clip has already made a huge difference to cooling Kachina out after rides which was the goal. 

Jumping - We continue to do weekly jump lessons and I continue to like the extra motivation to get out to the barn in winter. We jumped our first (mini) gate last week.

Dressage - I am firmly back on track with dressage. Our little break was what we both needed but I am enjoying getting back into proper dressage rides and Kachina is responding well to the upgraded expectations. We even had another clinic with Elaine in January (our first one since the wheels fell off the bus in September) and it was very productive and positive. Burnout over.

Dog - our new pup Aegir is awesome (super awesome) but I admit that I am still struggling to adjust to life with a dog schedule-wise. Needing to be home at the right time to feed/medicate him and also the 1-1.5 hour daily walks are making it hard for me to get to the barn some nights. It's still fairly new though and I'm confident I can come up with a better schedule to make things work, it'll just take better planning. Training a dog is also giving me some interesting thoughts about training horses in general and working with Kachina in particular (namely, it is very different), I still need think on this more because I really want to do more R+ training with Kachina but I try and she just doesn't respond to treats/humans in near the same way. 

Job - my current job has been busy, and I am also shortlisted (in the final 3) for two different new jobs, one internal and one external, I am in a nice position in that I could see myself being reasonably happy in any potential scenario (even if that is just staying where I'm at), but the unknown is stressing me out and I would just like them to get back to me one way or another.

Horsey Purchases - In November I bought some Horze Grand Prix breeches and SSG Technical white gloves, both of which I absolutely love and should do reviews on. I am trying to be financially responsible but I have a lot of items on my wish list. I have a little extra money coming my way this month and I am trying hard to determine what I want most because I can't afford it all. 

Dressage Community - I recently had meetings for both the Alberta Dressage Association and our local area group. They were good meetings but really reminded me that 2019 show season is coming up soon and I need to get my butt in gear on organizational stuff for my 2019 show as well as other events and initiatives.