Quick Update

Some quick updates about the last several days before I break the big big news and then buzz off to my jumper show today!

1) We've had a couple of very nice dressage days, where I've been focusing exclusively on my position and then discovering what a beautiful, soft, round, supple horse I had beneath me. Friday, however, was not quite as good because it was pouring and I had to ride in the indoor. Our warmup took 45 minutes of just trotting around with our head in the air, me unable to do much of anything really. Lame. BUT, she did come around finally after doing a single lengthening (the magic button?), and we proceeded to perform a whole mess of excellent lengthenings, shoulder-ins, and leg yields, as well as a ton of high quality transitions. I wasn't as focused on my position, which I think didn't help things. Note to self... figure out how to alter weather to my liking.
2) We also had our awesome weekly 2-hour conditioning hack yesterday morning.... at 6am. My parents were here visiting for the weekend, which was lovely, but they don't understand the importance of conditioning and they wanted to go to the Mystic Seaport, so that left me with one option: be on my horse at 5:45am, because it's a 2 hour hack and we were leaving at 8:30 SHARP to get to Mystic. Well, of course I rolled over at 5:59am cursing myself because I never heard the alarm, and I managed to get dressed, bolt out the door, run a brush over her, and toss on my tack, and be on by 6:08am... I LOVE living at the barn! I hate not being able to give her a good grooming. The ride was gorgeous... I love the daybreak, it's so peaceful and beautiful. We're up to 15 minutes of trot, and next week we move on to 20. Back in the barn, I fed Gogo and bolted off to shower myself (I hadn't even let the dog out yet!), and off we went to Mystic, which was great fun. Later that night, I gave her a half-bath (head, neck and legs) and hot toweled the rest of her, and decided that there was nothing on her to clip anywhere - it was all done just last week!
3) Gogo also got trimmed on Friday night. Or, well, mostly I just rolled her walls because there was literally NOTHING to take off on the bottoms of her foot. I didn't get pictures... I promise I'll have some soon! She's wearing them awfully fast on the pavement though... a little too fast if you ask me. On her LH, she's worn into the sole a little bit all the way around the foot and actually had a little bit of a ridge of sole forming on the inside. Note to myself... if I continue to condition on the pavement, next time I'll wrap each one with a bit of vetwrap and duct tape. The poor man's hoof boot!


ARE YOU READY FOR MY BIG NEWS???

My current tow vehicle is the second car I've owned, a blue 2004 Dodge Durango with kind of a wimpy engine but a good heart (it tries. Hard.) named Shaker. I love Shaker, a lot.



Shaker now has over 90,000 miles on it (I drove it to California and back once.... oops). It just had a ton of new work done on it, but it's getting old, and it's really NOT designed to be a tow vehicle for a horse trailer, even though it has a fancy tow package. So two night ago, over dinner, my parents broke this news to me:

They're buying me a new truck.
A brand new 2009 Dodge Ram 1500 Quad cab with a Hemi.
Oh. My. God.
Just hand me the most spoiled brat in the history of spoiled brats award. They gave me Shaker as a gift, too. AND my first car, a brand new bright orange Jeep Libery, as a total freebie as well. I hate to say it but I feel guilty. What did I do to deserve this truck?

(I also tried to ask if they'd consider getting me a 2500 but realistically I'm NOT going to get a bigger trailer or more horses ANY TIME in the near future... if I breed Gogo in a few years I'll have two horses and I doubt I'll have any more than that for a LONG time!)



I'm begging for it in orange (how freaking SPOILED am I??) but in reality I'm just going to get whatever color they have on the lot. Detroit is bleeding money right now, and we're also certain that Chrysler is going under, so they're desperate to sell. The deals are incredible, and there's a special one on 2009 Ram quad cabs at the moment, hence this lovely timing.

I just need to sell Shaker and we're all set.
I'll miss my Shakey :( But OH MY GOD, A NEW TRUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!