Rough, Rude, and Marginally Safe

I originally started this blog over a year and a half ago. This being my first post obviously shows my attention span to keeping a journal. The longest "journal" I have ever kept is Hunter's weekly log and even then there is a blank week or two (or three). Today life feel back into place. After quitting my previous pony job (for a thousand and one reasons I will not say), I found a job with dressage trainer Kelly Casey as her personal groom, and about 5 minutes after confirming my June 1st start date, I got a call from James Alliston. He was calling to see if I still wanted that working student position we had talked about. Um duh. And about an hour after that my long lost first loves new owner called me asking for his full story.

When I logged on today the only post I saw was on 7/25/12, 2 weeks before my first event in a year in a half with Hunter at Woodside, newly christened Marginally Safe, which seems to be fitting.. We competed at Training level, when really we should have been in the greeny weeney, lets put some brakes on that thing class. Seeing that I was competing without a trainer on a scopey horse (with no brakes) I figured I'd listen to Phillip Dutton "let the fence be the bit." Training was bigger than novice but prelim we would have murdered ourselves. And we werent qualified. Needless to say we had a run out at a 2ft corner. Oops. We did pull off a very nice stadium round but lets be honest. It was a fluke. We knew enough to get around a training level course but cowboy-ing it around prelim wasnt gona cut it.

Fast forward 10 months and a lot of trial by fire and here I am, with 4 prelims and a win under our belt and 2 weeks out from Woodside. Not to mention an awesome job with a Grand Prix rider and a killer (literally) working student poistion with a 4* rider that just took 3 horse around Rolex... I am not sure how or when I turned from "oh god they have that 2ft corner again. and its an A/B!" to "I better walk the Interdemdiate course... just to see what Im up against." Although we are still rough, a little rude, and only marginally safe, its a good start to see where this journey can take me.