We’ve all seen those posts on facebook, linking us to GoFundMe accounts for an array of different reasons. One popped up on my feed yesterday asking for contributions to a horse’s vet bills, and I started thinking more about crowdfunding.

In general I do not contribute to crowdfunding type of things except for in very specific circumstances. To be honest, I find the vast majority of it to be tacky and tasteless. I can’t imagine ever asking someone to pay my horse’s or dog’s vet bill – IMO vet bills are part of being a pet owner and it’s my responsibility to take care of that. I would be mortified to ever put my hand out and ask other people for that money. If I didn’t have it I’d put it on a credit card and pay it off as I could, or ask the vet about a payment plan. That’s my own circumstance to bail myself out of. Other things I’ve seen people asking for money to fund:

• buying back a former horse (maybe sell one of your other horses instead?)
• their horse show season (for real?)
• their kid’s birthday party (I have no words)
• their vacation (are you gonna pay for my vacation?)
• paying off a lien that someone took out on their horse because they didn’t pay board (speechless)

To me, none of those are things you should ever ask someone else to pay for. Get a second job, sell some stuff, have a bake sale, sell an organ… I dunno… just be responsible for your own life. What gets me most is that the people who seem to always be asking for handouts are the same ones who seem to have plenty of money to eat out all the time, buy booze, buy new clothes, get their hair and nails done, spend their weekends watching Netflix, go on vacation, etc etc. When did we become a society that would rather panhandle on the internet than actually work for something we want?

Some of you probably remember Taylor McFall, the girl who raised money last year to purchase the pony she had been leasing. I really loved this story, mostly because her mother would not allow her to just accept straight donations. She cleaned tack, she washed trucks, she made and sold horse treats. She earned the money she made, and she bought that pony herself. Big kudos to Taylor’s mother for teaching her daughter the value of a dollar and that with enough hard work you can get just about anything you want, without asking people for handouts.

That’s not to say that I’m a total scrooge about crowdfunding. I have contributed exactly twice – once to the CANTER Texas startup costs, to help them get the 501c licensing and stuff, and just a couple weeks ago to Jimmie Schramm’s Rolex fund. “Wait a minute”,  you say… didn’t I just write earlier that I don’t feel like people should be asking for show money? Yeah you’re right, maybe I’m a little bit of a hypocrite here, but let me explain why they’re different to me. #1 It’s Rolex. #2 Jimmie is a young pro that owns her own horse. She doesn’t have a rich owner that foots the all the bills. #3 They’re really just getting their training operation off the ground. #4 I get a coozie and a bumper sticker that say “I Believe in Bells” in return for my contribution. Hells yeah! #5 If for some reason they end up not going to Rolex, the money will supposedly be donated to a therapeutic riding center. #6 At the end of the day, I’m a Schramm fan. So, whether you agree with my logic or not, I think that’s a lot different than just some random person that wants to go to horse shows.

I will include a caveat and say that I think Kickstarter type of things are a lot different. Generally those are businesses or inventions trying to get off the ground and you almost always get things in return for your contribution. I’ve contributed to a few of those with zero hesitation. Much different in my eyes than paying someone’s vet bill for them.

What’s your view on crowdfunding? What are legitimate reasons to ask for contributions from other people? What causes have you donated toward? I realize that I might feel more strongly about it than most and seem pretty judgmental, but I’m genuinely curious to see what other people think when they see these things.

Warning: there is much gushing about my pony happening in this post so if you have a strong gag reflex or already rolling eyeballs you might want to back away now.

We had another dressage lesson on Tuesday night, and Henry was probably the best he’s ever been. I don’t know if it was a fluke or if things are just starting to click, but we had some honest to god throughness and connection. Pretty much the first time that’s happened. He leg yielded and shoulder in’d and turned on the forehand and lengthened. He did haunches out on a circle, leg yield to shoulder in, canter squares with leg yield, and stretchy trotted. In fact, in our first attempt at the ever elusive stretchy trot Trainer said “There he goes! Good boy!” and I said “SHHHH be quiet or you’ll scare it away!”. There were still some moments of stiffness and some slow or heavy transitions, but for the most part he was really fantastic. Every lesson has just gotten better and better.

After some canter leg yields, canter lengthenings, and transitions within the canter we took a walk break and chatted. Trainer was very complimentary of Henry’s canter work, saying that the quality and balance of his canter was very good, his lengthenings were naturally uphill, and the transitions within the gait were obviously easy for him. He said certain things that even much more advanced horses find difficult came naturally him. Then he called little ol’ Henry “quite talented”.  Talented? This guy? At derpssage? I felt like the Grinch when his heart grew 3 sizes.

If you’d told me a year ago that a legit dressage trainer/rider would ever call this horse talented, I would have laughed in your face. In fact, I’d probably still be laughing. The word “fried” had been used to describe him when I bought him, and just getting to where I could put my leg on without an explosion or keep contact without him putting his nose to his chest has been a long difficult road. The fact that’s he’s moved past that now is, IMO, a testament to Henry and his kindness and his general good nature. He tries so hard and really wants to please, I think as long as he trusts his rider and feels like he’s being treated fairly he could be good at anything. Trainer agreed saying he seemed very willing, praised me for being a tactful rider and said I’d done a good job with him. Majorly proud horsemom moment. I appreciate him saying nice things about me as well but I’m not gonna lie, the compliments for Henry brought tears to my eyes. Of course I love him but I’m also extremely aware of his (and my) shortcomings, so the fact that someone whose opinion I greatly value and respect sees something special lurking in him does my heart good.

Henry has suddenly also decided that whips will not, in fact, kill him and are not, in fact, cause to become extremely belligerent. Last summer I tried carrying a whip for a month in a attempt to get him to calm down about them, and every ride he acted like I was going to kill him. He was completely incapable of relaxing as long as I had it in my hand so I eventually gave up. On Monday I carried a jumping bat for our informal bumming around pole work day and he didn’t even seem to notice. So in the dressage lesson I decided to push my luck and warm up with a dressage whip. Again, he gave no craps. I did eventually give it to Trainer once we started canter work, since that’s about the time when Henry can sometimes get a little overreactive/anticipatory, but it totally helped in the warm-up. I even lightly tapped him on the butt with it once in the first leg yield when he was slow off my leg and he had a totally appropriate, non-belligerent-meltdown response. He just went “Oh yeah, sorry” and moved away. Knock me over with a feather, he no longer thinks I’m going to eat him. I joke that I have finally just broken his spirit, but the fact that he’s now chill enough to move past whatever happened in his history to make him so tense and worried makes me proud all over again. The boy is a champ.

End gush. Sorry if I made you reach for your barf bags.

I feel like this place has been a little lacking in Henry content lately, since I rarely have anyone around to video and take pictures anymore. Let’s rectify that today with a general Henry update and picture extravaganza.

We’ve slowly been coming back to a normal schedule now that the weather has stopped being stupid, and Henry is starting to gain back some of the muscle and weight that he lost over the winter. The weight has been really slow going and kind of frustrating to me because I’m impatient, but I’m finally seeing the beginnings of him filling out.

We did a little jump school on Saturday by ourselves, keeping the jumps small. I’ve been working a lot on trying to get more power in his canter and finding the deeper distance out of a more forward pace. I wish I could say I was succeeding on both counts, and while his canter to the jump is improving, that whole going-forward-to-the-base distance is so elusive to me. I’m trying, but my success rate isn’t really any better than 60/40. It’s always been a struggle for me to find the deep one without pulling all the way down to it, and with a lot of work I had it down pretty pat for a while, but then I stopped trying so hard and away it went. If anyone needs me I’ll be cantering poles ad nauseum trying to get my eye back.

Henry of course remains unphased by my general lack of talent and continues to put up with my crap with few complaints. The boy can take a joke. He also jumped his first little corner jump, which he didn’t actually notice until the last second, then he randomly launched from half a stride away and dove left, which made him have to jump way wider than if we’d stuck to the trajectory up the middle. Oops. That was my bad, I didn’t help him at all.

After that I decided I should probably like… I dunno… sit up and steer or something? He jumped it well, although it took several tries to really get him jumping straight across it. Once he did it was old news and he was no longer impressed.

In general, good saintly pony remains good saintly pony, and his life is full of cookies and pats. Oh yeah and food. He eats lots of food, and likes to make “smoothies” in his water by depositing his grain in it and then slurping it all up in a gross mushy mess of brown water. Hey, at least he’s eating it… Triple Crown Complete isn’t cheap.

If it sounds like I hit the weekend trifecta with shows, shopping, and sunshine, it’s because I did.

Saturday morning I headed out to the barn early to ride. Picture taking friend Amy came out (yay picture taking friend Amy) to get some general Henry pictures and nice pictures of some items I have in the queue for review. I’ll save those pictures for other posts minus this one because I love it. Brace yourselves, you’ll see it again soon.

After my ride, Brandy and I headed out to a big h/j show in Houston to do some shopping and watch the evening Grand Prix. Most of the shopping centered around my friend’s mobile trailer Luxe Eq… I picked up my new Ogilvy and Asmar stuff that I had ordered from her, plus a few extra things. Ok I might have a hat collection problem. A girl can’t have too many awesome hats.

We walked around and poked through all the vendors, looked at some new stuff we hadn’t seen yet, and dreamed about being rich enough to buy All The Things.

I also scored my absolute favorite thing in the entire Houston metro area… a Mango smoothie from the little coffee/smoothie/snack vendor at the show. They’re ridiculously good, I used to live on these things when I showed here. They’re almost enough to convince me to swing back into h/j again. Almost.

The Grand Prix was a 1.50m class and we nabbed great seats, not to mention the weather was perfect, so it was a lot of fun to sit by the ring for a couple hours and watch a lot of nice horses and good riders. We had fun looking up the pedigrees of all the horses we liked, and the announcer actually said the name of several horses’ sires! They don’t often do that, and I’m always thrilled when they do. It’s a start. My favorite horse of the class was a Cassini son, no surprise since he’s my favorite stallion of all time. Of course I did a terrible job of taking pictures or video… all I got was a short video of the little hackney that was part of the pre-prix festivities, and this gem, which proves that even the pros miss sometimes. Oopsy.

We didn’t get home until almost 11, which is the only explanation I have for the pit stop we made on the way home for late night driving sustenance. I regret nothing.

Sunday was the first day that SO and I have had off together where we’re both actually HOME (my bad) in over a month, so we decided to spend some time together and take advantage of the amazing Austin weather. We took the kids (the 4 legged and fuzzy variety) down to Town Lake so they could run around, then we headed over to have some Indian food and drinks on an outdoor patio. Low 80’s and not a cloud in the sky – it does wonders for the soul, both human and canine.

And because I’m a sucker for a 24 hour sale, the C4 buy one get one suckered me in for sure. Two belts (one for Brandy, and mine will be a neck strap) and a sticker for $30!

I hope everyone else had an equally lovely Vitamin D and retail therapy filled weekend.