Alberta Equest

In my last post I touched on the lesson with my friend "S" when she spent the weekend on my farm, but I really wanted to save the details for it's own post.  When I bought Sierra on June 9, 2018, the following weekend I hosted a Dressage Clinic at my house with a Calgary based instructor, however unfortunately it didn't work out to bring her back for future clinics.  As a result, I haven't had a lesson on Sierra since that weekend, which means we haven't had a lesson in over a year!  While "S" remains adamant that this was not a formal lesson, based on the sweat dripping from both of us by the end, I think it counts. If I were to break the past year into sections that encompass all that we've worked on they would be Introductions, Construction Work and Refurbishing.  I would venture to say I have paced myself to really establish our relationship and identify and repair pot holes which was then followed by taking an abrupt and unforeseen detour...

Over the past weekend, my life was turned upside down when not only did our Sport Horse Club run a 2-Day Jumper event at a big event in a town 45 minutes away, but I also had a close friend venture west with two friends/clients of her own, to try out Kidd and take in the event. The trio arrived late Saturday afternoon after a long drive from North Eastern Alberta.  We had wrapped up our day at the show and I got home just in the nick of time to greet them at my farm.  They got parked and unhooked their trailer in my yard for the weekend and we exchanged introductions and quickly went to meet Kidd.  My friend, "S", who arranged the trip n' try outs is a Para Rider who, although we have been good friends online for over a year, have never met in person. When she learned I was considering selling Kidd pending a successful PPE, she told me about her friend/client who she felt would be well suited and everything seemed to just fall into place.  We did have some conce...

I refuse to acknowledge that Summer is here until June 21st, but regardless with the warm weather and longer days (gotta love northern Alberta for that) it has opened up for endless possibilities of farm work and a little riding.  The downside, of course, is that my candle, which is regularly burned at both ends, has not grown in unison with the longer days so I have been finding myself feeling run down and overwhelmed as of late. Regardless, the show must go on and there's no rest for the wicked.  We have been busy from sun up to sun down between our full time jobs and farm/yard work.  Last week the earliest we got inside was 12:30 AM (and yes, it was still light out) - my life has been literal chaos.  Between upgrading our arena footing to gardening, fencing, fixing equipment, and other odd jobs in between, we have managed to squeeze a little bit of time on our horses.  My arena footing is currently 1/3 ripped up and naturally we decided to start on the s...