Ch-Ch-Changes...

So I realize that it has been a very long time since my last post. Too long, in fact. So much has changed, I don't even know where to begin. First and foremost, I survived my first year of college with decent grades. Yay! I ended well in my IHSA standings as high point rider on my team in my division and was the first of my school to win High Point Overall at a competition. I didn't make it to regionals, but I was literally one spot away. Pretty neat. Second, I am now the owner of a registered 19 year old black Arabian mare named Ebonit who is currently in Ashland under the dutiful care of my significant other. After leasing to buy a yearling Andalusian/Warmblood colt for a little over a month--one I definitely didn't need--I decided that it was a mistake and went with an unbroke Arab mare instead. Makes sense, no? Well, maybe I have lost it a little bit, but I love my mare and wouldn't trade her for the world. She "chose" me, per se. Love at first sight and all that. She tried to kick the person who scooped her up from a slaughter auction, then looked at me with batting eyelashes, and I was sold. How could I resist? One fugly-I-mean-gorgeous mare later and here I am. My life has turned from being all about the status to all about reality and love, and I like it that way.



However, it seems like status might once again come to pick me up on my feet right after I had finally made the decision to let it go. I am about to find out whether or not I can have it both ways.



After one possible summer situation fell through, sending my girlfriend and I into turmoil, I decided to take a sort of working student position in Axton for the summer so that I had some way to stay on this coast while doing what I love best--riding. Basically, I ride horses in exchange for food and board with a few extra perks. Pretty simple. The distance has put my relationship through hell, but I figure it's better than if I had gone all the way back to California. Besides, I love it here (even though know the gf is going to murder me as soon as she reads that. I think she has a problem with sharing. ;) ). I get to eat, sleep, and breathe horses. I am pretty amazed by what it has done to me in the short time that I've been here. I feel great. I am remembering what it is like to absolutely love life and what I do. I am remembering why I ride and why I was and maybe still am considering training horses as one of my career options. Horses are my life. Nothing makes me happier than to get on the back of the horse and just dance.

And now I am thinking of doing what I never thought I would be able to do or even want to do again. Show. My father decided to send me one of our horses we are trying to sell--Fiction--as a consignment horse. Fiction is a monstrous bay 18 hand imported Irish Sporthorse beast by Cavalier Royale with ears like Eeyore and a personality like Romeo. According to everyone who has trained him so far, he is a spastic beast who needs a bicycle chain (a Flying W bit or a Potato Masher bit--things I have never heard of before in my life) in his mouth in order to do anything. The trainers who had him before claimed he would be too strong and complicated for me to ride. They said I wouldn't be able to sell him. They said the best he could do competitively was the Low Jr./Am. Jumpers, a 1.30m jumper division, and that he could only do that with a burly man on his back with the strength to muscle him around. At 115 pounds, I am definitely not a burly man. But I am definitely intent upon proving them wrong.

Yesterday, for the first time in 2 years, I jumped 5'. And it was effortless. No bicycle chains, no worries, just me and a horse in a KK Ultra Lite Snaffle soaring over 5' fences. It was not even a stretch for Fiction. He jumped it as easily as if it was 3' and had an absolute blast. I have not met a horse who loves to jump quite as much as he does. Now we are looking at possible shows and I might have the chance to show in the Grand Prixs that eluded me before. This time, I'm not going to let the status get to me. I'm going to have a blast and try not to think about the moment I have to hand Fiction's lead rope to some other really lucky rider.