The Weather… Groan

And then there is the weather.  Despite living in Canada, this time of year is supposed to be around 5 degrees (C) and if not sunny, rainy.  We have been stuck in a deep freeze all week, which is getting colder, and snow coming out the wazoo.  Not nearly as much as Buffalo but for those of us who have to travel to the country, it’s enough!

This should come as no surprise to those of you who have had family riders for a couple of years.  Horses cannot be kept in the city, therefore they have to be kept in the country.  There are also farmer’s fields in the country (or it wouldn’t be called that, I digress) which are open spaces in winter and cause winds to blow snow around making the country roads a FAR cry from the city roads!!

So it is enough of a challenge for this horsey mom to get out to the barn in the winter months let alone when it’s still autumn and it shouldn’t be an issue at all!!

Well, time to suck it up and head out… wish me luck!!

Chores…

Well, chores.  For three Wednesdays now we have been trying to get a tight grip on chores.  I’ve been making up the grain, but we seem to fall short somewhere in the middle of it all.  My daughter has to go off to teach at 5:30.  Of course we have something else against us–it’s dark by 5:00!  It’s incredibly difficult to feed horses when you can’t find them!

This past week we get a text asking if we can clean out two stalls because the morning people who usually do it didn’t show up!  A few curse words fell from this horsey mom’s lips as she began to weed out poop from the shavings on the floors of the stalls.  I piled it all up in a corner for my daughter to do the heavy lifting but that never happened, I can’t remember why now.

So despite having a plan–get the grain all made up and distributed between 4:30 and 5:30–it has yet to be executed to perfection.

She’s loving teaching though!  The beginners, she says, are boring.  But we all start somewhere!  She loves teaching the two girls she has that are slightly more advanced.  She can do things with them.  I’ve explained that the other two kids will reach that point and she will be the one to get them there.  That will be a fantastic feeling–I have personal experience!

Well, it’s off to the barn shortly to pick her up from her lesson.  Oh, and get more stuff on our poor pony’s leg as she still has mud fever.

Yikes!

The Show Must Go On…

And so it did!!

It was a huge success.  A little slow but if you’re just starting out, get used to that!

My daughter, who chose to ride Hunter with 2′ jumps decided to come off (fall) during warm-up.  Same as last time, the horse decided she wasn’t going to go over the jump and she turned.  My daughter hit her hip on the base of a standard but her other leg flew over and slammed into the flower box under the jump.  That leg hurts worse, or at least for now.  We’ll see how she’s feeling when she wakes up.

She took 4th in the Costume Class (it was a Halloween show) and then she took 4th in Hunter on the Flat, 3rd in Hunter over jumps (where she had fallen off in warm-up) and 5th in Equine over jumps and on the Flat combined because her leg was hurting so much the stirrup leather was digging in.

There will be a Christmas show and hopefully all will be well for the two of them!

She is also going to be teaching a total of 4 kids which is also terrific for her.  We decided taking on chores on Wednesday nights–hmmmmm…..

I’ll keep you posted on how that works out!