Plans Made

 When we left off last week I was planning on heading up to watch one of our local schooling shows and do some recon on trainers. Well, thanks to an unseasonably late atmospheric river, the show as cancelled. It's been the wettest April/May/June on record and all the stalls, the warmup, and the lunging arenas at the show were completely flooded. Show management also pushed back the start of the rated show this week a day due to how wet everything was. 

But Trainer M wasn't deterred and decided to host an in-barn show for her clients, and two outside riders who wanted off property schooling miles, and basically put together a show in 24 hours. M is the one who hosts the show series we did last fall, and the one this spring, so she had almost everything ready to go. I messaged her asking if she needed help running it and volunteered myself. She happily accepted and I became the office lady. 

My station for the morning

It was fun seeing all the lesson kids getting ready and I was able to put names to faces, both human and equine. I got a close up look at how M runs her program, how the two assistant trainers work, and I was able to snoop around the barn more. When I introduced myself to people, most of them remembered Cinder and loved her. I felt very welcomed by everyone.

I was pretty happy with most of what I saw during the day, but there were a few things that pinged my spidey senses. I know there's going to pro and cons with every program, and nothing will 100% mesh with what I want, but for the most part I agreed with what I saw and heard during the day. Unfortunately M still hasn't said anything about when/if a stall will be open, and looking ahead she's gone most of the month of July at shows. I really don't want to wait till August to put Cinder in training.

Splitting up my shit is hard

 So, July 1st Cinder is moving back to SF and going into training with Trainer A. I like A's riding style a bit better than M's and I think Cinder will do better there. My tentative plan, that A's on board with, is to haul over to M's once or twice a month for lessons and then show at the h/j shows with M. We'll see how it goes but I'm really excited to be back with A and she's really happy to have us back as well.