Thankful Thursday (a day late)

I had a lot to be thankful for yesterday. I wasn't able to post this last night, but I figured "better late than never!"

Here are a couple of things I was thankful for on the last day of 2009:

A full moon... The skies were cloudy last night, but there was still enough light reflecting off the snow to go for a late night ride on my stallion, Bo. Riding at night by only the light of the moon is something I had not done before. It was a lot of fun.

Bo... He is SUCH a good boy and even though he wasn't terribly happy about going for a quick ride when it would normally be dinner time, he was a trooper and took me on yet another beautiful, memorable ride.

Having a good time... We went out to a bar with a few acquaintances and even though my idea of a good time is NOT hanging out at a bar with people I don't know, or barely know... I had a really good time. We played pool, talked and laughed, and I even got up and sang a karaoke song - something I haven't done in a long time.

I'm really looking forward to this fresh new year. I have a feeling I'm going to have a LOT to be thankful for as 2010 rolls on. :)

News from the Frigid North

A blizzard rages on outside tonight. This storm moved in during the wee hours of Christmas morning and the wind and snow haven't let up since. It is supposed to be moving on tomorrow. I've always thought it's kinda fun to be snowed in, especially if the power and internet stay up. This time we were lucky and have had power the whole time and while the internet has been spotty, it's stayed up for the most part. I am eager to get back to the barn and do more than feed, water, and flee back to the house.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I had a very horsey holiday. I received several horse books, including nearly all of the famous books by Marguerite Henry. I had owned all of her books as a kid, but my collection of books was ruined in a flood 10+ years ago. It's nice to have some of my favorite horse stories again. I also received a very useful gift of a hoof knife and hoof rasp. The boys' feet are due for some attention again and I'm so happy to have my OWN tools now - rather than having to borrow them again. I'll have to buy a nipper eventually, just to have on hand, but for now the knife and rasp should keep the boys in good shape.

I have big news! Tonight I finally registered a domain name for what will be the future online home of my studio. It will be a place devoted to all of my creative pursuits and hopefully a place where I can sell some things now and then! This has been a project in the making for several months now. First I had to decide on a name, that took a while. Then I hemmed and hawed about making it "official" and buying the domain name. After learning some html in building my personal site, I think I'm ready to build the studio site.

That's all for now... I'm off to bed!

Thankful Thursday

I have heard of Thankful Thursday on other blogs and I've always thought it was a good idea. It is, after all, very important to have an "attitude of gratitude". So with that in mind, I thought I'd make my first ever Thankful Thursday post.

It might seem strange, but... I'm thankful for power outages. Yesterday we had a blizzard blow in and the power kept blinking. I was annoyed because I had a bunch of things I wanted to do on the computer. Finally the power went out and it seemed like it would stay out. I ended up spending a few hours on the couch, under a warm blanket, reading a great book. The icing on the cake was that my (usually antisocial) cat decided to join me. She spent the entire time curled up on my belly/chest area while I read my book. When it became too dark to read, I set the book aside and dozed off myself. So after reading a couple hundred pages of a great book that I hadn't had "time" to read lately, I took a nap with my kitty in the late afternoon as the wind and snow blew outside.

Yesterday I ended up being thankful for an "inconvienient" power outage. Last night when the power came back on I decided to finish the book. It left me inspired, which in turn inspired me to return to here my blog and make this first Thankful Thursday post. I'm hoping to post here more often again. Goodness knows there's plenty I could write about!

We have another blizzard brewing outside at the moment and the warnings sound like this one could be pretty severe. Maybe I'll get more reading done tomorrow if the power goes out again.

Professional trainer?

So for this blog I take you back to the Mustang Makeover in mid-April... During one of the open practice sessions in the wee hours of the morning (pre dawn), I took Onyx to the big arena. There were a whole bunch of other riders in there, but I remember one in particular. He was riding around on his mustang, and her tail was full of shavings. Now this guy was one of the "big names" and I'd heard him bragging about all the money he'd won in whatever horse sport he was into. I remember being struck by him riding his horse around early that morning, with bedding in her tail and thinking, "That's not very professional...". Sure, it was a practice session, sure it was 5am, but there were plenty of other people there, riders and spectators. Maybe it's just me, but I thoroughly groom any of my horses before I do anything with them. Most especially if they are going to be in the public eye, casual ride or not. I would expect a "pro" to do the same...

All that came to mind again out of the blue just a few days ago when I took Bo, my stallion, out of his stall for a quick ride. I was going to hop on him bareback in the indoor and cruise around for a few minutes before heading to work. There were other people riding in the arena already that afternoon. As I brushed shavings from his tail, for some reason I thought back to that "pro" trainer and his horse's tail that morning.

Now just a few minutes ago I checked my email and found a message from YouTube, where I had hosted several videos of Onyx during our time together. A lady has written me, wondering if I have any ideas on how to contact that particular trainer. It seems she bought his mustang and needs some paperwork from him, but he appears to have dropped off the map. His website is down and his phone doesn't work. She says she is thankful she paid for the horse by check and that she noted it as such in the memo of the check. I have no idea how to get ahold of him, but I certainly won't forget the "shavings tail" on his mustang that early morning. Barring that anything bad has happened to him (hopefully not), I have to think... Professional? Doesn't sound like it after all...

Independence Day and other ramblings

Last night Jeff and I went to Mount Rushmore to watch the fireworks. We went with a guy he works with and his family. We all got there several hours before the show and found a good place to sit and wait until dark. All was going well until the clouds moved in and then mist and fog. Soon we couldn't see Mt. Rushmore, then we couldn't see any of the closer rock formations... Then we could barely see the trees just across the street. Unfortunately it stayed that way the rest of the night. They ended up doing the fireworks show anyway and all we could see were the clouds/fog glowing different colors. We heard the booms and could even smell the powder/sulfur from the fireworks, but couldn't see them at all. At one point the fog shifted a bit and we started seeing about half of each firework when they went off. We saw half of about ten of them and then the sky closed off again. The grand finale really sounded great. I think it would have been the biggst finale I've ever seen - based on the rapid fire booms going off for quite some time. Jeff and I were talked afterwards, he said "you realize this means we'll have to do this again, to try and see what we missed". LOL Then everyone went back to their vehicles in the parking garage - only to be told by the police not to start our cars or move them because the highways were closed and would be for another hour or two. So... we all hung out in a parking garage for an hour or so. LOL It was a crazy night. I just wish we could have seen the show. We got home at about midnight and went straight to bed.

We're planning to go to Custer, SD tonight and try to see their fireworks. We went last year and they put on a really good show - the best fireworks I think I've ever seen. I think the Rushmore show would have topped it, if we had SEEN it. Unfortunately there are clouds rolling in right now so who knows if we'll get to see anything down there either.

On a totally unrelated note, I have joined Twitter. I've heard a lot about it over the past several months and I finally decided to give it a go. It's a pretty simple concept, you just post short updates about what you're doing at the moment. I like it, because it's another way I can keep in touch with friends and (so far) it doesn't take that much time to do. LOL I just pop on every now and then and type a little blurb about what I'm up to. Anyway, you can find me there at: http://twitter.com/HorseTender

I've also been hard at work expanding my html knowledge and I've built my first little webpage from scratch. I'm going to use this particular page to share some pictures and information on my number one passion: horse training. It's coming along well so far. I have a lot more I want to do now that I'm learning how to do all of this html stuff. My computer stopped working over the last couple of days, right when I was going full speed ahead on all the html studying. So I've gotta get back to work on that. I'm testing out my computer right now. Jeff just finished fixing it and putting it back together. So far so good... Yesterday it wouldn't stay on more than 5 minutes. But here I sit rambling away and it's still humming along. I better post this now and not press my luck! LOL

Oh boy... Narrow minded sheeple

I frequent a few different horse forums. This morning I read a comment on one of them that got me thinking about the sad state of the world. Well, the horse world anyway, I suppose. Anyway, the poster said that until they heard how many World Champions someone had trained and how much money they had earned, she wouldn't listen to what they had to say. I thought "man, what a narrow-minded statement!" There is a LOT to learn in this life and I'd wager to say I've learned a whole lot more about horses from non-World Champs than I have from World Champs. Not to mention, stories abound about high ranking trainers who are crooked. A certain World Champion western pleasure trainer comes to mind who had a horse found in his barn that was horribly abused. Also a top ranked Arab trainer who was convicted of several counts of having plastic surgery and a myrid of other surgical procedures done to FIX conformational defects in his Halter horses. I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in anything either of them have to say. Maybe I'll never be a World Champion because of that - so be it. I find it really sad that some people are so narrow minded. The whole thing kinda falls under the category of two things I dislike - people with closed minds and people who are sheep, blindly following along without thinking for themselves. Both of those types of people seem to be in abundance. Has the world gone crazy or am I the one who is mad?

Checking In

*sweeping away the cobwebs*

Hello all my faithful readers! *cough, cough* It's dusty around here...

OK, yeah I'm a little odd.

It's been a couple months or so I guess since I last posted here. I got a wild hair up my butt just now and figured I'd write something.

I've been keeping busy with my horses and various projects. Right now I only have two horses of my own. My faithful Paint stallion, Bo and my newest addition is a yearling Spanish Mustang colt I call Cazador. (Spanish for "hunter" - or so the online translation sites tell me) I actually got him back in... late February/early March I believe it was, while I was still training Onyx. He was pretty rough when I first got him - shaggy, skinny, wormy, covered in ticks and pretty wild. He didn't want much at all to do with people. He's changed quite a bit and is now a slick, shiny, friendly young stud. He is a flashy dun overo and seems to turn heads wherever he goes. That's good, because I have quite a career planned for him. His main purpose will be to serve as an ambassador for the Spanish Mustang breed. There are only somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 Spanish Mustangs in existence (depending on which figures you read). They are descendants of the Conquistador's horses, the first horses brought to this country. In addition to being from a rare breed, my young Cazador also carries a rare bloodline within the breed. His dam has two doses of a stallion called Scarface. I've been told there isn't a whole lot of Scarface left in the breed. I certainly haven't been able to find him in more than a couple horses in my searches so far. So I plan to campaign Cazador quite extensively and use him to spread the word about the breed. Big plans! So far he's already been out in the world a handful of times and he has gotten rave reviews from everyone who's seen him - horse person or not. The future is looking bright!

The latest development in my horsey life is I believe that, for the first time, I'm going to hang out my shingle for horse training services. It's definitely something I LOVE and I suppose I'm pretty good at it. I don't consider myself an expert and I certainly don't know everything (NO ONE does, no matter what they think) but I can train a horse for sure. For many years I've resisted the idea of training for other people because, quite frankly I like horses more than I like people. But when my adventure with Onyx came to an end, I was pretty bummed not to have a training project anymore. Bo is far from "finished" and there is a lot more I can do with him. I do have Cazador, but it will be a couple of years or so before we get to do any riding. I've found myself missing the days years ago when I had SEVEN horses of my own, all youngsters and all in training. I used to spend hours everyday on chores and training and I loved it. I think it would be great to have more horses to train now, but my finances certainly don't allow having my own herd again quite yet. My business has been stagnating for a little while and I have my feelers out for a 9-5 job (yuck) but until the right one comes along I have a whole lot of hours in the day I could be spending with more horses. So, I think the time is right to dip my toe in the waters or training for other people. I've spent the last several days editing and re-editing a contract, picking other trainer's brains on what to charge and what to expect and composing an ad. I'm a little nervous, but I'm also looking forward to seeing how it goes. Wish me luck!! :)