OMG

Again another side note to EA adventures (still having major issues with the videos uploading on youtube)...

Did anyone see what fuglyblog posted today???????

OMFG!

I HATE western. HATE HATE HATE.

I have never seen one GOOD thing come out of western riding. Every single horse I have seen being ridden western is either, broken, sore in the mouth/back or way too f-ing hyper.

If there are some good western horses out there, please, do show me because I HATE seeing a horse SO broken that they cannot properly canter .

Those poor creaturs will never be the same, being trained with gimmicks and falsehoods. They never know what its like to be free in their gaits; forced to crawl along in a hop along canter and shuffling trot. They deaden their tail and tie their heads high so they cant hol dthem up by themselves anymore.

Barrel racers horses mouths are ripped to shreds...too f-ed up to be calm in any circumstance...

OMG I could go on and on, but the W. Pleasure/Hunter world is one that I would lOVE to see dissapear.

OK, rant, done.

Don't even get me started on other show horses...soring, heavy shoes, chains...god.

Interlude to EA Adventure

I just thought I would say that I hate school. Hate technology. Hate that I get no sleep. Hate today.

Running on 4 hours of sleep everynight due to craptastic amounts HW and feeding at the barn.

My computer crashed in the middle of writing a paper. 9 pages...ALL my research lost. Due tomorrow AM. FML!

The videos from EA won't pull up on my comp, but will load onto youtube...3 hours at a time (2-4 min videos)..WTF

ANd I havn't been able to ride my horse in 5 days.

Today is a bad day.

There is my venting.

I hope tomorrow will be better, but I doubt it.

Bad Things Come in 3's; EA Saga Part II

I've discovered that the urban legend of "bad thing come in three's is fo real"

As some of you might know from my last post we blew a tire on highway 70 onthe way to Columbus for the Equine Affaire.

That was bad thing no.1

I shall continue by saying that we awoke after only about 5 hours of sleep, zombie-like re-loaded Yankee into the trailer, and drove the remaining hour to Columbus. It was quite exhilarating actually, as tired as I was, knowing I would get to see all the magnificent prancing ponies and meet tons of new people, visit my old friends, and exihibit in one days time in front of hundreds of people.

I was pretending that I hadn't already spent a months paycheck on gas too, so refilling for the, oh, 5th time, wasn't frightening at all.

This gas guzzler sure can eat.

So we arrived in C-bus, miraculouisly found our way to the expo center (if none of you have drivenin C-bus I recommend you avoid it like the plague. Possibly the most stressful network of roads I have ever had the displeasure of navigating.), paid our parking, and got Yanks setteld into his stall.

He rolled like a champ.

La-dee-da, Brandon and I went to go park the rig after we unloaded. Seems simple enough right?

Wrong.

No signs told us which way the barns were, so why should I expect a sign leading to the exit? Pfffft we can find our way through this clusterF.

Well, the road I went down was a dead end...So I promptly backed up using my mad backing skills (seriously, I am pretty excellent), and turned around. No big.

Wrong.

I am still La-dee-dah-ing, heading towards another road, when I hear Brandon say those horrible, horrible words...

"SHIT. We just lost 2 more tires"

Whatnow.

What did he say? Surely not that we have two more flats?

But yes, we did. I shit you not. On the same side as the previous flat. WHATTHECUSS.



Excellent. I literally laughed out loud. I could not believe this was happening to me.

Lots of curse words, phone calls and an hour later we got permission to park where we were (which secretly I was happy for since the nearest parking was a mile away!). We had a new task, FIND TIRES!

It was difficult since I did not know the area and we had a time limit. 2 hours to find 4 tires. I called 8 different places, 2 had them, one had them at a * reasonable * price. I bought 2, my mom bought the other two and we kpet one of the older, good tires as a spare. I paid $138/tire and my mom paid $150. WOW, FOL (F our lives).

So since I spent an exponential amount of time stressing my wee head off, and about 5 hours worth finding, getting and replacing tires, I never did get to walk around.

But I did get to RIDE :) In my spanky new shiny County dressage saddle!



IT IS BEAUTIFUL, I know, NO need to tell me :) I wish I could afford a Passier, but alas I cannot. And after my bank account just got raped with new tire expenditures I will not be doing much of anything for a while. I planned for gas $, did not plan for tires. Good news is I just got my SECOND tax return over a $1000, so thats helpful.

But back to it.

I brushed Yanks out, tacked him up and went to the only open arena there was. I did not change clothes besides my breeches so do not judge my massive comfy tee that I slept in, lol.



At first he was a little anxious. There was a TON of stuff going on. Carts, carriages, mean stallions giving him the eye, massive drafts, western horses zipping around, trick ponies warming up...it was a lot to take in even for me. I was proud of how well he handled things. He only got uppety twice, mini rears, when the western horses cut us off and a carriage went by.



He was a little tense the first 10 min, but all I wanted to do was get him out of the stall and loosen him up. I ended up riding only 30 min. There were people everywhere and we kept getting our picture taken, making me wish I had changed :/

I got several compliments on how well behaved he was from many very famous trainers. Made me feel extra good about my horse since sometimes I have my doubts about how awesome he is.



I did a TON of lateral work, keeping his brain occupied.


Overall, he was a gem and barely worked up a sweat in the heat (85). We accomplished what I wanted to by getting out and riding. We were to ride in a clinic and breed demo Sunday, so I didn't want him standing around after a long haul.



So fresh and so clean



oh I LOVE my new saddle btw :)



After our ride I hosed him off and braided him. He promptly tried to remove them but HAHAHA I have fooled you with the slinky!



"Dey no come out mom"

I had about 2 hours till Pfizer Fantasia (more on that later :)) so I DID get to walk about a little. I always love browsing tack and whatnot, but since I had to get tires I couldnt buy anything and I pouted a little. Just a little. I swear.


The massive drafts that are part of Fantasia.

Overall, day 2 of the adventure was SO stressful I thought I would explode and definetly did not go as planned. I cried a lot....but it got better and now the wallet wound doesn't hurt as much since I got the tax return from last year (am awaiting this years still) and get paid Friday.

Thankfully, AGAIN, no one was hurt and Yankee wasn't even in the trailer this time, so that's a relief. I just kept telling myself, it's just tires, its just money, over and over again.

Unfortunately I will mst likely have to cut out some shows I planned on doing this year because of the damage it did to my wallet AND gas prices are estimated at $5/gal+ starting in August and when you have a gas guzzler like mine with 7MPG and a 3k LB trailer WITHOUT a horse in it...its gets expensive.

That night after Fantasia my mom, Brandon, grandma and I CRASHED hard into our pillows, glad the day was over, but excited for the next :)

To be continud....

Ea adventure Chaaa-ley Part I

WOW.
What a weekend.
I'm just going to jump right in this, and those who are friends with me on FB, don't ruin it for everyone else.

Want to hear a scary story?

It starts with a boy. And a girl. And their horse.

It was an exciting day, for the girl was headed to Equine Affaire in Ohio to ride with the best of the best and show off her mad skilllz and try to make more horsey friends and connections. She was hyped up and ready to drive.

This girl was not fond of driving but the excitement took over and she trucked onward for almost the whole way, not complaining once about how sore sitting in the truck makes her legs. She just kept driving an driving.

The girl was concerned for her horses' well being though and wanted to make sure that they stopped and let him stretch his legs a little since it was a 9 hour drive.

The horse was very happy to get out and move around a little even though his stall in the trailer was large and airy.



The horse was unsure about what the girl was doing up above him.



The horse also smelled and heard pigs. He was curious.



Mostly though, both horse and girl were happy to walk around and get some blood flowing.

The trio headed back on the road. Nearing Tara Haute they got excited. They were so close to Dayton, not far to go till they could rest.

The girl was still excited, they would get in a day ahead of time so they could spend all saturday relaxing and sight seeing so that by Sunday, all would be refreshed and ready to ride!

Girl got tired, so boy took over driving for about an hour. Boy had never driven a horse trailer before, but he had driven boats. Girl was comfortable with handing over they keys since they had a full tank of gas, had only higway to cover and boy was a very good driver.

Girl fell asleep. It was a pleasant sleep, full of happy dreams of prancing ponies and cupcakes and rainbows.

She awoke to boy cursing loudly and slightly freaking out. She sat up in fear. The trailer was jackknifing. Boy was calm and cool but girl was hysterical.

"we blew a tire" said the boy.

"WHAT?! What do you mean?! How?"

"well obviously we hit something, or the potholes murdered our tire. Either way, we need to change it"

"But we are like a mile from any exit!!!"

"then we drive to the exit"

"WE CANT!!! MY HORSE IS IN THAT TRAILER!!!"

"There is nothing else we can do. I am not changing a tire on the freeway at 11 at night"

So they drove 20 mph to the nearest exit. It was the scariest time of this girls life. She feared only for her precious horses' safety. Longest mile she ever drove.

They were lucky the exit had a massive 24 hour gas station and truck stop.





Boy prepared the trailer for tire changing, girl unloaded horse and hoped he would behave.

She was silly to think he wouldn't, he is the best pony and mearly sniffed things with curiosity.




Horse was thinking, "why are the silly humans so freaked out? This is fun!"

Well, the boy disccovered that the tools we had to change said tire, needed to be plugged in. requiring unhitching the trailer and moving the truck next to it. Boy did not think this was awesome at all, in fact he was rather upset at this revalation. Girl tried to keep him calm by saying 'At least no one died. We are ok, its just a tire'. It did not help boy.



Horse was curious and wanted to help boy. He understood boy was stressed and wanted to help.

Finally, almost an hour and a half later, tire was changed, horse was still so chill and it was now 1 am. Awesometastic beacause they still had 3 hours to go.



Well there went their night.

The trio arrived in Ohio at 4am and promptly went to bed...

to be continued......