Stress City

The past month has been Stress City.  We had a big accreditation site visit for work and have spent every moment getting ready for it.  And of course, the week before, our internal review board said they wanted to their biannual inspection before the visit, instead of during the visit like originally planned.  So our time frame was suddenly shortened.  But both are over now and hopefully things can return to normal.

Still as cut as ever

To keep my sanity, I've mostly managed to keep riding during Stress City. Peebs, for the most part, has been good.  We've started putting the jumps up a bit to a whopping 2'3" and even a 2'6" fence.  And added in oxers.  I'm nervous about them, but Peebs don't care.  As long as I don't get handsy, and keep my hands down, he just goes with the flow and jumps from where ever I put him.

One of the easiest horses to ride through a gymnastic

We did our last show of the year at the end of September and while it was a bit of  a hot mess (apparently Peebs doesn't like waiting in the rain for his classes to go and got a bit spicy) I'm happy with how I handled it. He wanted to run, but at the same time was spooking at whatever and trying to go sideways.  We mostly trotted fences and I tried to keep my cool and not let it affect me.  Which I did, and we did improve with each round. In the past if Buddy or Phoenix pulled something like that I would have been in the fetal position crying and not able to push through and keep going.  So while we didn't have the show I wanted, it was worth it in terms of showing how far I've come as a rider. And the mental victories like that are worth more than ribbons any day.

I swear I'm not that pale in real life

There have been a couple big splurges, because we all know Stress City is best dealt with booze and retail therapy. I dropped my GPA on the concrete tack room floor a week or so before International Helmet Awareness Day, so of I made lemonade out of lemons and took advantage of the sales.  CO's and Samshields don't fit my head and the tack shop I went to didn't have any GPA's in my size and I was wary about ordering another with out trying it on first.  I liked how the Kask fit and it's pretty comfy so we went with that.  You'll have to wait for another post to see the other big purchase.