First of all – my SS loot arrived this morning! At 6:58am… which I know because the mailman rang the doorbell. This time I’ll forgive him because a pretty little box was waiting for me from Beka at The Owls Approve. She definitely wins for artistic box decorating skills.

 

And it contained some awesome loot! Treats for the dogs, treats for me, and SOCKS! I love socks. And these are my favorite brand – Sock it to Me. Thanks Beka, you did great! I love everything.

I already gave Stewie his treat. Sadly, it is no longer with us because he devoured it in 30 seconds. RIP pretty Savannah dog treat. Delia isn’t out of bed yet so she doesn’t know what she’s missing.

I also might have had some of the pecan praline and am now riding a very impressive sugar high for not even 8am. Thanks again, Beka!

On to the Christmas summary… this year we had our family Christmases before actual Christmas, so SO and I decided to make this a “Just the two of us” X-mas extravaganza. First we rolled out of bed at a lazy 7:30 (late for me), I popped a hash brown casserole in the oven, and we opened presents. I think, as usual, the dogs made out like bandits.

Then we loaded up the car and headed down to the local mountain bike trails. The weather was absolutely perfect for it, and I didn’t die (a couple near-misses don’t count), so that’s a bonus. My legs still felt a little tired from all the spin classes though.

Then it was home to shower and change before heading to the barn. SO very rarely sees Henry so he was quite entertained with taking pictures of Henry’s funny faces while I picked his feet.

Then he got a big warm carrot bran mash and I tried on his new blankets. Perfect fit! Hopefully those stupid rubs will start going away now. Anyone want a lycra shoulder guard that doesn’t seem to do jack?

The dogs got to come to the barn and play too, wearing their new outside coats.

Then we walked over to the other barn to say hi to the basically famous Autobahn and give him some treats since his mom is out of town. Any guesses as to why he and Henry are great buds?

After a quick pit stop at home to drop off the dogs it was off to – what else – a Chinese restaurant for a late lunch/early dinner. The food was nothing to write home about, but it was definitely an experience.

And then we stopped at the gross local neighborhood bar for a beer (him) and cider (me). This was a great reminder of why we never go to said gross local neighborhood bar, but there weren’t many options on Christmas.

And then finally, we headed home to veg on the couch and watch the Doctor Who Christmas special. All in all – a pretty awesome day.

I hope everyone else had a great Christmas too. It’s back to reality for me today – starting with a trip to go get my passport. Joy.

 

 

Wednesday words of wisdom: 3 spin classes and 3 rides in 4 days make for a tired body.

I’m not saying PS of Sweden has a few awesome sales going on, buuuuut I’m just gonna drop this here… http://www.psofsweden.com/en/offers/. I know a few of you were talking about buying one, so get yourself a nice Christmas present. I mean really, look it in the eyes and tell it you don’t love it.

Also, this is your last reminder to get those entries in for the logo contest! You have until December 31. In addition to the awesome prize pack offered to the winner, I’m offering a gift certificate for a custom Firefly bonnet to the runner-up (an $80 value) and an Ogilvy baby pad (a $40 value) to the second runner-up. Don’t forget to title your submissions CONTEST ENTRY and email them to charliebrowntb (at) hotmail (dot) com. Note that if you have several files, it’s probably best to only send 2-3 at a time so hotmail doesn’t reject them.

Everyone enjoy your holiday! From the $900 Facebook Pony – Happy Holidays!!!

Henry is wild so very rarely that it’s nothing but hilarious to me when he gets to feeling frisky. Mostly because his frisky is a lot of head twisting, and maybe the tiniest most pathetic crow hop you’ve ever seen. But he’s trying really hard and he’s REALLY impressed with his naughtiness, which only makes it even more hilarious.

My standard “I think he might be wild” approach to a ride is to put my sidepull hackamore on him and let him canter around the field. He gets to hop and play and toss his head for a few  minutes and think he’s fantastic, and I get to just sit there and giggle and let him get it out of his system. Alas the field was still a bit wet so I headed into the ring instead.

We trotted around a bit, with Henry at what is his Mach 10 (so a normal horse being forward) and wanting to canter canter canter! Trainer asked if I wanted to join in the lesson and first I said no but then I figured what the hell, this should be entertaining if nothing else. There was a gymnastic set up – two crossrails that were a canter in one stride, and then 3 options for jumps afterward. A bending two strides left to a vertical, a bending two strides right to a vertical, or just go straight and jump out over a vertical in 4 strides.

After a bit of warm-up the first course went like this:

It was actually a really good exercise to do with his hackamore on. The first couple times through he wanted to drag me and mini crow hop through the corners, and of course I had pretty much no control over that. But his lack of focus resulted in him burying himself, which in turn ended up being a good self correction. After that he came back pretty well from my seat and decided that plowing through and yeehawing around the corners was perhaps not a great idea (commence Henry pouting because once again I took all the fun out of everything).

The second course got a lot more complicated/tight/twisty, but again – great to do with the hackamore. Precision was key, so I was forced to use mostly leg and seat to steer instead of relying more on my reins.

He was being good by this point, he figured out that everything came up really quickly so he settled and listened and looked for the jumps. Nothing earth shattering happened, but I love a good gymnastics lesson with low jumps that really drill on basic concepts. I really had to sit up and ride accurately, and he really had to pay attention.

Today the vet comes for his coggins and shots, but hopefully I can squeeze in a quick jump school first.

 

The serious part came on Saturday morning, but let’s start with something a little more exciting.

As I mentioned last week, Henry’s new PS of Sweden Flying Change bridle came on Thursday (it shipped on Monday from Sweden -beat that) so I spent Friday night getting to know it a little better and conditioning it. I also used that as an opportunity to try out my new Higher Standards leather balm, one of my awesome Xmas gifts from my barn buddy Brandy (aka Auf der Autobahn). It worked pretty well, I just rubbed in one liberal coat with my hands and it softened right up. God I love this bridle. It’s freakin gorgeous, and that’s saying something because I generally hate black tack. And as has proven typical – really impressed with the design/functionality from the PS of Sweden guys. We’ll explore that more in a later post, but here’s another gorgeous picture of it.

On Saturday morning Brandy and I met up at Gold’s Gym for a spin class. We’ve been talking about getting a membership and hitting the gym together but we wanted to check it out first. I used to do spin all the time when I did triathlon, and honestly I LOVE it. You could not pay me enough to do any other type of group class, especially Zumba, but spin = awesome. Toward the end of the last set of high resistance jumps I was pretty sure my heart was going to explode out of my ear. Sounds awesome right? They were running a special for membership, so after class we joined the gym. Now we’re committed! When they were taking our information they asked who to notify in case we dropped dead, and we informed them that we always wear bracelets with our medical information because we ride horses. They seemed a little perplexed by that for some reason. Then Brandy and I texted back and forth all afternoon about which body parts hurt the most (basically my entire skeleton and all of my muscles, so no big deal)… this is the beginning of something great. Horribly painful, but great. It’s far past time to get serious about getting back into better shape – all this dressage nonsense is going to kill me otherwise. Plus I really owe it to my pony to not flop around like a big fat sack of potatoes, my riding is questionable enough as it is. We’re spinning again tonight and tomorrow.

Then it was a quick trip to the barn to graze the boys (still a little too muddy to ride), who are ridiculous

then more Xmas shopping and present wrapping, with a helper.

Saturday night we did Christmas with my family, since my brother was in town with his wife and son. We ate, we opened presents, we took pictures, and then we headed off downtown for an x-mas themed Master Pancake comedy show. Everything they do is hilariously inappropriate, and that show was no exception.

Sunday I crawled out of bed with fairly tolerable aches and pains. I hauled my butt out to the barn in the afternoon, hopped into an unplanned lesson, and rode my pony for the first time since Tuesday. The light week was partly intentional and partly because of the weather, and then I realized it’s only 3 weeks until our next show. Oops, better get ourselves together. We’ll talk about the lesson tomorrow.

One and half more days of work and then I’m off til the 29th! Can’t wait, I need a break.