I am finally back in the saddle!

I have been gone for a while…. In my defense I have some pretty good reasons. Number one is that I made a human! Number two is taking care of baby humans turns out to be very time consuming! For the first 6 months I hardly did any riding or training. But a year and half in and I feel like I am finally finding time for my horses consistently enough to start documenting our progress again. I really love reading about all of the other horse blogger journeys and I miss this community! So, I pledge to be a better blogger for 2019.

A few brief updates:

My wonderful trainer during pony hugging therapy

Oak – I stopped riding Oak at about 40 rides. My balance was too compromised by my ginormous belly to feel safe anymore. After giving birth and healing I tried to pick back up on where I left off. He went right back to where we were fairly quickly but after my 5^th ride or so I began to realize that his tension under saddle was not getting any better the more I rode, so there had to be something we were missing. I talked to a trainer friend and she came out to assess him and see what was going on in that cute little hobbit pony head of his. After he exploded up and backwards with her for just lying across his back bareback we decided he was still having trust issues (humans can be dense sometimes). So I went back to the beginning AGAIN. This horse has to hold the record for most restarts at this point. I decided to step back from Oak, take more riding lessons and maybe find a lease to get back in shape with. If I was going to be restarting this horse again I needed to regain some confidence. I found a lovely lease that I have had about a year now (I introduce her below) and I am slowly feeling like myself again. I also found a wonderful trainer (Whole Horse Equitation) that has been working with Oak and I. It has been a really slow process this time where we are working through all of his layers of distrust and fear. Oak is like an onion or an ogre… He deserves his very own update post so I will stop there.

Grayson – He has been sound! Yay!! I talked a little bit about his injury before, but he tore his deep digital flexor tendon 2 years ago, but it took us a long time to diagnose it unfortunately. When we finally figured out what was wrong we put him on long-term stall rest with some corrective shoeing. I was pretty sure he would never be sound again. After a year of rest and then a long rehab of walking and limited turn out my Gray son is sound! Yes! We have A LOT of catching up to do training wise. He is 4 and turning 5 in June, but I have not done much with him between his multiple injuries and my pregnancy. We are both finally on the same page and hopefully moving forward. We are working on wearing a saddle, moving forward on the line, and tolerating human silliness. I am finally allowing myself to be excited about his future again.

We have done a lot of work just finding his forward

Lacey – Lacey is my wonderful lease horse. She is a 15ish Arab/Clydesdale mare. She is the perfect horse for me right now because she is very sensitive and can be reactive but she is also sensible. She has been helping me get back in to shape and get some confidence back and I have been helping her learn to relax. 

The wonderful Lacey!

Ok that is enough for now, but I am going to work on introducing myself to the world of horse blogging and I hope to be a better blogger now!