Lease Ride & Australia Photos

AHH! It would have been a perfect day to ride outside today, except K has asked that we don't use the outdoor ring until they get a change to drag the footing. So we were stuck inside. =(

She did well today. She seems to be getting more flexible to the left, but only on circles. Still need to work on that for serpentines. We also practiced leg yielding, but she really just wanted to run to the wall. Which is weird normally she does pretty well with those. Lovely canter today too! Always exciting. Nice and quick but not rushy and unpleasant.

AUSTRALIA <3! (since I didn't have much to say about riding, I have pictures!)

<---Creepy clouds at the San Francisco airport

<---Navy Base and ships in the harbour

<---Bridge from the ferry

<--On the pylon thing. That's my mums Canada sweater in the right. And you can kind of see a group of people climbing up the bridge a bit above the baldish guys head.

<---Downtown Sydney from the ferry.  And all the trees are in a really pretty garden/nature park thing. With loads of cockatoos, which are cute but more annoying than any crow, seagull or magpie here.

<--St. James

<--St. Mary's. Really beautiful cathedrals. Haha, once when we got back to Canada, there was something on the news about Sydney and this cathedral and I was all excited b.c i was there once, and then I almost cried 'cause I miss it soo much (the country, not the church (and I know I'm a loser =P))

<--More creepy clouds and the good truck with it's cute little yellow legs.

<--A view of the rocks from the bridge. This is first area they started to develop in Sydney. Its sooo beautiful!! In the red building, is Pancakes on the Rocks (so yummy!), a candy store that makes their stuff by hand and some gift shops.

<-- I believe this is the museum, but I'm not 100% sure. That or it's part of St. Marys but I don't think so.

<-- this is what my sister got at Pancakes on the Rocks. Mine had caramelized bananas and pecans and I think they were butter milk with vanilla ice cream. Sooo yummy. Good thing we walked around downtown for the whole day or that would have been a lot of calories!

Since I haven't Got News About Tom...CAMELS!

They are so weird! If you ever get the change to ride one, you really should, it's so strange!

<------Ruby

The one's we rode were really sweet and they don't smell as bad as I thought they might. They walking moving both left legs or both right legs at the same time, so they feel very different from a horse. They also hate ants. When we were riding on a dirt road, you could see little lines of ants going across and the camels would stomp on them. Priceless. I hate ants as well so it was hilarious to me. Ruby was the camel I rode and has the same name as a hamster I had when I was eight.

Not a very attractive photo of me and Ruby isn't looking at the camera. The one in front of me is Dock and my sister is riding him.

Not sure what the name of my parents camel was.

You can kind of see a couple of the kangaroo's here, but the other pictures are better.

<-----Wild Red Kangaroos!

<-----More Kangaroos!

They race camels here too! Didn't actually see any races but there was lots of postcards with camels being raced.

Ick

Is what I'm sure Tommy was thinking last night, he's not a fan of the beet pulp in his post-jumping meal, usually it's all mixed in with the grain and pellets, but it wasn't last night, it was off to the side. So he ate all the pellets and stuff but left as much of the beet pulp as he could. Even just holding it in my hand to try and get him to take it, he wouldn't, basically had to push it right against his mouth before he would take it. It's to cold for him not to be eating everything especially when he isn't gaining weight. He was doing really well when it was warmed up a bit, but now the cold is back so he has to burn more calories to stay warm, even with his thick blanket on.

As for the lesson, it was to cold to get them sweating actually doing a lot of jumping, so we did a lot of flat work and they had a lot of walking/standing breaks. Even L's mare who is horribly out of shape right now didn't sweat very much. So we just did a line and practiced hauling in the middle and then cantering out. Mostly transition work this week, but he's doing so well at them!! It's great! However, he's still not doing as well at the upward transitions, epsecially from the trot to canter, and those are the ones that make him sweat and until it warms up, we won't be doing many of them.

I really wish I had my own horse. I love Tommy but I want my own horse. There would be so much more I could do! More shows, go trail riding in the winter or off the property, try new things like side saddle! I've forgotten about it for a while. At my old barn (RBR) there was a girl who ride side saddle and I always thought I wanted to try that, then I forgot about it and moved to HS to start jumping. Then I was creeping through blogs and several had to do with side saddle and I really want to try it! But, HS doesn't teach it, Tommy doesn't know what the hell it is and I don't know how to teach him, or even if I could I don't know that K would let me. Besides, a saddle like that has got to be expensive, especially in Alberta, there's doesn't seem like a big market for it. I haven't even seen one in a tack shop here.But I think it would be awesome if I got to try it. Unfortunately, that's probably one of those things I won't get to do until I have my own horse, which is unlikely to happen for at least four or five years depending on what happens after uni.
I don't know how people can stop riding for university, it seems impossible really. The only time I can't see being able to ride is possible if I get to study abroad. I'm hoping I can study more than once abroad, three times would be prefect. Then I can go to the University of Dundee in Scotland, London Metropolitan University in England and Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.
I don't think Sydney is real option though, their calender is reversed from ours, so if I did get to study there it would have to for at least a year if not all four. It'll cost at least $17,000 Australian per year, and that's just tuition, not even living expenses...and a plane ticket. I want to go back so badly though! Fuck me, I should have been in the IB program (International Baccalaureate)! Where is the rewind button to my life?! IB is international, kids all over the world study it, it by far increase my chances of getting into Macquarie since there's few spots for international students as it is. At least in the UK I would be able to just go for a semester or something. But not for Australia, which really, really sucks! Sydney is soooo beautiful and I want to go back sooo badly! I don't know how my mum could have come back! I mean Canada's great and I love it of coarse, but it's...it's Sydney damn it! She had a job and friends and everything. Oh well, it would just be a brilliant excuse to go back.
I totally live in fear of having a life where I'm going to be stuck here forever and never have the chance to go to Europe or back to Australia or ride horses. I don't want to be one of those people that gets so caught up in there job and family that they don't get to do what they've wanted until it's to late.
But that's a whole other problem.

Snow!

Yes!! It's finally started snowing again today! Hopefully it'll stick this time, I really want to go skiing, and it just doesn't feel like winter without it.
   My mum lived in Australia for a while, she stayed with some friends in Sydney and worked at IBM. In Sydney they have this thing called "Carols in the Park' and she went with her friends, she said it was the weirdest thing, being Christmas time without the snow, and that it just felt weird.
I had a training session today. Oh my jeez, I'm sooo sore. We did lots of intesive weight training so my arms really hurt. For cardio I had to do Jacobs Ladder for 3 min at quite a high speed, so now walking is a bit complicated.

Leura, Australia

Leura is a beautiful little town in Australia's Blue Mountians. I really miss it, it felt  like home, it was cold...sort of, and it reminded me of Jasper/Canmore. Of course the native trees in Australia are green all year round but the tree's on Leura's main street had no leaves at the time. So it was like Jasper in the fall/winter.

Soo pretty. If you are ever in Australia, make the trip up from Sydney to Leura. It's only a couple hours drive up. Plus they have the greatest old style candy shop, and loads of other cute little stores. And they have way better pop tart flavours than we do here!

It's Been A While...

Been really busy studying and riding so I haven't had a lot of time to blog.

Anyway I passed all my classes fairly well, so next year should be decent now that I have my science diplomas out of the way, unless of course I need to up grade. But I really, really hope I won't have too.

As for Tommy, we had our first show on Sunday and we did really well! The clear round 18" was a breeze, and the classic was too. Then in the 2' class we ran into problems. We had a rail down over the first clear round, but we bought another ticket and did it again, and went clear. But in the classic, we had a heart breaking rail down. The very last rail, and until then it was perfect, I can say with all honesty, we would have placed high if that rail had stayed up.

We ended up with two clear round ribbons and a very pretty and well earned 3rd place ribbon with a $42 cheque!

Our next show will be for sure on the 29th of August, I'm on holidays for the next 5 weeks so I'm not sure about anything before then, but that show is the same as the first so I'm hoping we'll do well in it too. If Tommy is in good enough shape and we are doing well enough I would hopefully be in the 18", 2' and the 2'6". At this show they go up by 6".

He is amazing  he was so calm and quiet at the show, it was amazing. In the past I've always had horses like Diesel, which are crazy! They are loud and don't listen and just crazy. It was lovely to have a change. My coach was talking to my dad and she said that she was happy I finally had a horse that was well behaved. Honestly I was so surprised because he's very energetic and in the outdoor ring at home he gets really ahead of himself so he's going to fast and then skids out at the jump

Oh! And on Saturday I got my drivers license, today's my 17th birthday, I'm going shopping with one of my best friends tomorrow and on Saturday I'm going to Australia!! Defiantly a very good week!