I'm back...and have a new horse!

meet Wolfgang:
16.3hh, 16yrs old, TB

picture isnt so good but I have more to post soon! Going to see him tonight, so i'll try and get some them! But he's absolutly perfect and I love him to bits already

Last weekend was the Canada Day long weekend, and on one of those nights, some absolutely horrible person made the decision to drive drunk and ended up killing one of the young women from the barn.
She was the kindest person I have ever met, she dedicated her life to helping others. She had an MA in psychology and she worked for the local sexual assault center helping survivors. Lessons with her were always fun, she had such a great sense of humor. She had her whole life ahead of her and so much to look forward to, but now it's just all gone.
It's so devastating and it doesn't even feel real. When I read what happened all I could think was "that can't be right, I just saw her not even that long ago walking Percy at the show!" it was right though. So because of some complete moron, a wonderful, incredible person has lost her life.
RIP, we all miss you.

Shawn & Flooding

I rode Shawn last Thursday and even though he was good, better than expected actually, it didn't really feel like anything special.

We were inside due to the recent ridiculous amounts of rain we've been getting here, something like 21 out 23 days in June have been rainy. He's feels so slow that I always find myself wondering if we're actually going to be able to make it over. We did though, every time.

Sunday I went to Maple Leaf to watch L take her greenie over the hunter X poles at her first jumping show. She did really well, and L didn't have any broken bones like she got in the dressage show earlier this year.

Tomorrow we're doing another Goldylocks lesson, about bodily awarness to know if we are behind, ahead or with the motion.
On a unrelated note, central Alberta has survived the awful flooding that has happened in the south (for now). Our river did rise and people living near it where warned of potential flooding. But the south has just been hammered.

Canmore is smallish mountain town a short ways out of Banff, with this small creek that runs through, my uncle owns a town house a short walk up the hill from it and due to this rain the creek has risen so high it's washed away parts of the banks and damaged houses all along its banks. Someone even said in their news interview that the damage won't be covered by the insurance companies, even though this is the type of the disaster that would fall under the "act of 'god' ", you would imagine.
This is what the creek normally looks like:





 And this is it last week, slight farther down stream:







This house is right along Cougar Creek, that's its deck hanging off of it, all the land around it has been washed way completely. 


 The Calgary Stamped grounds. They have said that "come hell or high water" the stamped will be  going ahead and the city is asking to borrow buses from other cities because the water has fucked up the LRT tracks and they will have to be completely redone.

Edmonton Journal: Timeline of Alberta Flooding
Calgary Floods Before & After photos
"9 Uplifting Moments from the Alberta Floods" (Naheed Nenshi is Calgary's mayor)
The floods in 20 photos
Bow River floods Siksika First Nation Communities
Calgary has a huge zoo that it's along the river, so they were really worried about flooding and their plan for the big cats low lying pens was to take them to the court house and use their holding cells to keep them in. Luckily, they didn't actually have to do that.

Goldielocks Jumping w/ Zander

I looooove Zander!! He was fantastic on Thursday when we were outside. I was expecting him to be pretty crazy because sometimes just riding in the outdoor ring can change everything, but he was great! He sort of reminds me of Pony when he gets going and not like Java who gets head strong and suddenly you don't have any breaks left. He is easier to trust than Java as well, for whatever reason I still can't figure out.

Our first jumping exercise was a "goldielocks" thing where we approached the jump to slow, then to fast and lastly "just right". Zander did really well, we didn't have any chips at either of the incorrect paces so even though they were slightly awkward, they were not terrible. The two warm up courses we did consisted of either left or right circles only. So the circle starts at A goes over 1, completes at A and then down around over 2,3 and down to C to start that last circle over 4.

Small jumps, but I got in trouble a few times for giving to much release over such tiny jumps. Ooops, same problem last time.

When we had to trot to swap leads though he rips his head up, he could knock your teeth out if you weren't sitting up properly, so that's not good. He's saddle must not be fitting properly because he's got one of those awful foam pads underneath it. They just make the saddle even tighter and fit worse, so maybe it pinches or something during the downward transition. But since he's owned by K I don't know what, if anything, I can do about it. we used on Diesel and look what happened with him. Although there's no way to know if that was from the foam pad or not.

Here are the two full courses we did, course one has eleven jumps in it, jump one is the one we practiced different canter speeds over. We started with the warm up circles to the right, then over the 3 strides (we had some problems with getting a good take off over the 2nd jump in it) and then do the circles over the left.

Kokanee news: he has made it home safely to BC and was reunited with Roxy.

I finally took a photo of the tall boots I bought from L, they're just an old model of the Ariat heritage line, sadly I'm going to have to get them stretched and possibly have the calves adjusted because I can't zip them up any more than just under half way. She says they must have shrunk a bit sitting in the cold garage all winter. They are fairly well broke in, so once they fit getting ankle blisters won't be a problem. I hate having such wide calves, it makes trying to find and fit tall boots the biggest pain in the ass.
Now I have to figure out what to do about leasing. It's only an extra $40 a month to get four extra rides, the only problem is work. Having two jobs = having to mangers who seem to go out of their way to screw up plans. ie. Oh, you can't work Thursday evenings because you're at the barn? Here, work the next 3 Thursday evenings in a row plus all the Saturday mornings just to make absolutely sure you can't see your horse! t('-'t) (can you see the little face? the t's are his arms and middle fingers). I'm not so sure if the extra money from the 2nd liquor store is actually worth it. I'll quit by the start of August i think. Maybe I'll be able to get in at least one small local show before fall.

Java and Zander

This last Thursday I had an outdoor (finally!) lesson with Java, and she was alright. She seems to be almost leaning on the bit, and I don't remember her doing that before and I'm not all that sure how to get her off of it. The "give and take" thing only goes so far with her and eventually your fingers are so sore from her pulling that it gets a bit difficult. So I'll have to figure something else out. I'd imagine it has a bit to do with one of her lease girls that L doesn't really like that much. This girl uses way to much have hand and not enough leg, so if Java's bracing against that for her, she'd probably do it for all of us. Its a shame L can't really say anything to her about it, she uses her arms to much because she doesn't have enough core or leg strength but how would you point that out to someone?
She was also fairly good for jumping, even got a right to left lead change, which is pretty exciting! We did struggle a bit to get the right lead though, she was hell bent on having her neck bent to the left, so it was really frustrating, but in the end we did get it. The point of the jump course was "to look where you're going" like turn your head in the air to look. There was only 3 jumps to start with and in the end we added a  forth, all verticals, which is nice. Cross rails get a bit boring since they're usually pretty low.

During the warm up each jump had a set of trot poles going perpendicular to them so that we had to get through those to force us to look where we were going and help but not cutting to close and then getting a bad distance. The hardest turn was to get from 3 to 4 so that horse would have a chance to get both eyes on the jump and actually have some depth perception. Java and I only missed it once but never got quite straight to the center and usually jumped at an angle, which as K said is fine, so long as you don't try and turn them in the air, just keep the straight diagonal.

I rode Zander last Saturday (indoors) and he was actually perfect. I don't think he could have done better, which was great since the last time we were together was in January and that was a disaster! Our only problem was a run out in front of the oxer (number 4) but that was my fault for getting a bad turn and chipping in to 3, not pushing forward enough through the four stride and leaning forward a bit a few strides out from 4. Other than that he was amazing. Unlike Java, who gets really head strong, Zander "get's his engine under him" as K says and just goes for it! Despite riding Java a lot more often than him, I've been a bit wary of her and I'm not sure why, but he was much easier to just trust and believe he could and would do it. (i have very little reason to think differently with Java, but there's just been something different since I got back that has made jumping with her a bit less comfortable than it used to be. So that's weird.) He's almost a bit like Pony when he really gets going that makes him a lot of fun.  I was hoping to have ridden him on Thursday but one of the girls who was supposed to be there was going to ride either him or Gody, so I had Java. And work usually prevents me from riding on Saturday mornings, so I'll probably be riding Java until July when the schedule changes and we can riding during the day during the week.

This is Zander's course, it was a make your course lesson. Number 5 was actually a white fan jump, which Zander didn't even blink at, which was excellent! Java doesn't like white poles, so that wouldn't have been so good with her.

Back to the barn...maybe?

I emailed K tonight to ask about any open lesson times for this Thursday, fingers crossed there is. According to her blog there's a lot of no stirrup work this week, and I am so out of shape, that's going to suck ass. But the worst academic year of my life is over, so now I have lots of time tonged back in shape! Hoping not to ride Kokanee. But we'll see. Based on what happened last time, I'm going to give it another shot and go from there. I'm trying to find some pictures of one of the first horses i took lessons on at RBR, Stinger, since I have news about him.

400 books

Unfortunately things have been very busy lately, so I've not been out to the barn. I bet you're very surprised to hear that! Or not since I haven't been there for ages and almost every post has been about why I haven't been the barn.

It's now the end of classes for this semester, finally!! As this has been the year from hell. I've got three exams left and a term paper. One class that I already wrote a final in, has the option of doing a paper as well and if you do it they will swap the paper mark for the lowest midterm mark (but if you do even worse on the paper, you still get the paper mark). I was going to do it, but now I'm not, because I just do not care anymore. So the end of term means moving again. I used to think moving was fun, and the first time it was. But now it is tedious and boring and I hate it. If it was somewhere cool, like Europe or Australia then it would be excellent again. I've brought a few things home already, four boxes of books (none of which are textbooks, just books for fun). They get to come home first because they are the most important. I counted all the books I own and it's over 400, I would have never guessed that. Combined with moving and studying is work. Which I loath. I'm almost considering quitting, but I also really, really hate job hunting and training. But the manager is out sick for at least another week, so I can't talk to her about hours, I need at least 20+ per week in order to actually stay. Sadly, we have to many people and small number of total hours per store, so she might not be able to do that. I could have counted on the old manger to give me all the hours I wanted, because she played favorites and because I was the only non-dumbass employee, I was the favorite! This one, doesn't do that sadly, plus pretty much everyone working in the store now, is not a dumbass.

As far as switching barns, not to much luck with that. The barn I found ages ago and really liked, ZR, is listed on all the show jumping barn directories, but their website is down and it's been down for a long time, so I don't know if that means the directories haven't changed but that they've gone out of business or what. Anyways, I hope to be able to ride again in May. For now I've just been going to the gym to try and get in a bit of shape before going back, plus once the snow is gone I get to go cycling again and I get a new bike this spring, so I'm excited for that.

Oh, and because the manager is out sick, gets who has to work on the Mane Event weekend? Me. Even though theres other people to do it, but now the schedule is up, so no one will trade. I will get some revenge, petty as it maybe. They always call me when they are sick and need some one to cover, but I won't. At least the next time they ask anyways. So I don't get to go see the George Morris clinic or any of the really cool dressage ones I wanted to watch as well. :(