Ready or not, winter season has officially started in Ocala. All the snowbirds are trickling in, the circuit shows have kicked off, and suddenly the calendar is full to bursting. Depending on how you feel about all that, it’s either annoying or exciting.

It also means a return of the Great Seasonal Side Hustle for me, because we definitely do like extra money. Last year I mostly worked at HITS, which is my preference between the two major h/j facilities here. The vibes are better, the parking is close and easy, and the vendor area is near a couple food options. As a vendor, those are selling points. This year, however, the store is doing something a little different. We have 3 locations in Ocala – a really nice cabin at WEC over by the hunter rings with all the latest and greatest, a clearance trailer at WEC up by the vendor village with literally everything inside 15-50% off, as well as a trailer at HITS. Since my hours of availability are the least predictable and consistent, I’m in the clearance trailer at WEC this year. Which, let’s be real, is probably the best place for me anyway. Who loves a good deal more than me? Literally no one.

The downsides are that parking at WEC is a literal nightmare and there’s nowhere for me to get food anywhere nearby. Also, the WiFi blows (to be fair it also blows at HITS… and in this entire town, really…). The clearance trailer is kind of fun though, since discounting stuff always makes people happy. Also, one of our customers has the cutest corgi puppy. Bonus.

This is also the time of year where everyone starts to come visit, so it seems like friends are always trickling through, and I have a couple business meetings set up next month with people I’ve only ever talked to on the phone or through Zoom.

Things are also back in full swing with riding, too. I started up lessons again this week, and I’ve got a clinic and a show on the calendar for this month. I’m trying very hard not to think about the fact that we’re less than two months from foaling season… the first mare hits 320 days in mid-February and after that they’re pretty much all just bambambam one after the other through mid-May. We’ve got 9 expected foals this year, which sounds relatively terrifying because 6 felt like a lot last year.

I guess I should do a post on what all foals we’re expecting, in case anyone is thinking about adding a cute little baby horse family member to their herd this year. You know you want one. We all want one right? Of course we do. Baby horses are fun (mostly).

Anyway, on to more fun things. Bingy boy and Presto have both been in regular work, gearing up for the season. Presto got a bit of a chill time/mini hack vacay around Christmas and New Years since I knew we’d be hitting the ground running in January. Bingo has mostly just been chipping away at the basics. Like learning to go straight, the beginning of lateral work, transitions and half halts, etc. He’s pretty clever, and gets better ride over ride.

He’s naturally pretty well-balanced but was very crooked when we started and, like most racehorses, is a bit stuck in the base of his neck and wants to do everything with this weight down in his shoulders. That’s the way they run, after all. He is a very big and long horse so it’ll take him some time to build up the muscle and ability to truly carry himself from behind, but he’s starting to understand what I’m asking and shows glimmers of it now and then. He’s naturally quite well balanced and definitely has the ability to be uphill, so I think as soon as we get the “shoulders up” concept and muscling established, he’s gonna be fancy on the flat. I haven’t really done much jumping at home aside from trotting and cantering cavaletti… I’m alone most of the time and it’s difficult to start one over fences without a ground person to set things and pick up rails, so I’ve been holding off on much of that.

As of this week we’re back in our regular lesson schedule. Presto had a jump lesson on Monday, which was rusty at best.

I haven’t jumped a course on him since mid-November, aside from XC schooling, so I was honestly expecting him to be a little wild and wooly. Presto was the opposite. A little TOO quiet, and behind my leg. We finished up better than we started, but we’ve got another lesson scheduled for today to try to polish that back up a bit more. My trainer is hosting a Tom McEwen clinic next week and I signed up for a private dressage lesson plus both the SJ day and the XC day, so Presto will be busy. Hopefully we’re back in sync by then.

As for Bingo, he had his first training ride on Tuesday, which was very exciting. I’m maybe like 5 weeks into actual retraining with him, and the past two weeks are the first ones where he’s done more “working” than hacking. He’s still pretty brand new to all of this, but I really wanted my trainer to sit on him because 1) she’s a much better rider than I am, and can help him understand things more clearly 2) obvi I wanted to see what she thought of him.

He loaded and traveled great, and while he was definitely wide-eyed and interested at all the activity (their place always has a lot happening, it’s overstimulating to the max compared to our very quiet life here at our home farm) he was reasonably behaved. Trainer did some groundwork with him, which he was mostly good for but tried a couple times to bolt and exit the arena, so she went absolutely skiing. He eventually gave up and focused and decided that maybe he could circle her politely after all.

She got on him for maybe 10 minutes at the end and he was foot-perfect for that. He trotted and cantered and did his transitions and was straight and relaxed. A+ for sure. She said he felt really straight and even, and especially liked his canter. We’re on the same page there.

After she was done I untacked him and grazed him by the ring for a while so he could take in more of the activity, and by that point he was very settled. He loaded back up like a champ and ta-da, first training ride in the books. I think the goal will be one a week, and then we’ll kinda see how things go week by week from there. The first one was kind of a “let’s see where we’re at” so we can make a plan for him going forward. The big thing at this point is obviously just strength. All of what we’re asking is brand new to him.

Patreon folks, you have video of him on your dashboard, and I’ll try to get some video up from every training ride so you can see the progression. Sometimes I set up my Pivo at home to get some footage of me riding him too… the goal is to document his journey pretty clearly from the start, so hopefully the change will be fun to watch over time!

One other fun happening that I’m finally able to announce publicly – I was invited to join, and elected to the Retired Racehorse Project Board of Directors. They have some really interesting ideas as far as breeding, registration, databases, pedigree tracking, etc so I was approached due to my history with those things. I’m very honored to have been asked and looking forward to seeing what we can do over my two year term!