In Which Things go to Shit

 You know when you have the feeling that one thing is going to go bad and you should probably bail, but you hang on anyways because something else is going wrong and you can't deal with both things and then the second thing gets absolutely horrendous? That's been the last 6+months over here. 

Peebs all loaded and ready to move

When we last left off, I was getting ready to move Peebs out of the barn he'd lived at for the last 6 years, owned by my friend's parents. I was really sad to move, as it's the perfect little retirement barn, but I am happy with the barn he moved to. In true Peebs fashion, he settled in almost immediately and everyone loves him there. He has a new BFF Jet, a mid-20s retired Morgan, and the two of them are the old crotchety men of barn. They both love being outside as much as possible, even on nasty weather days, so the two of them will be out when everyone else is inside. 

Peebs and Jet get an absolutely gorgeous hilly pasture with tons of grass

I was really nervous about Peebs moving, and he did have some fecal water issues for the first couple of days at his new barn, but after that he's been perfectly fine. Which was great, because the in the weeks leading up to moving him I started having issues at Cinder's barn. Trainer M has been incredibly busy all year, ramping up showing with her own horse, as well as with personal life stuff. Her assistant ID, who I love, was over worked and quite stressed as well and things started slipping through the cracks. 

Trainer M up on Cinder warming up at our first show of the season

I had a nasty fall in mid-April off of Cinder. She had a week on stall rest and hand walking after getting her hocks and stifles injected, and as we were doing our first ride back at the trot the dryer buzzer went off. She jumped straight up, then bucked and I knew I was a goner. I landed on my ass and had a nice knot in my butt cheek for a week, but otherwise ok. A little over a week later I had a lesson on my 40th birthday with ID, our first one in the outdoor for the year. Cinder kept spooking at the far end and I was pretty hesitant to canter her at that end. ID got after me and I said fuck this, and left the lesson. ID told me that I needed to scratch the show we had the following week so I told her I'd have Trainer M show Cin and left. Looking back I know what ID was trying to do, and I know I need the occasional push, but it was absolutely the wrong time to push and the wrong method of doing so. 

I did end up showing Cinder in the 2'6" under saddle which we won

A week or two after moving Peebs, which I did the day after the show above, Cinder came up foot sore. Peebs was just getting over his stone bruises in both fronts, and I had plans to pull his pads so obviously Cinder had to join the fun. She ended up getting pads on both of her fronts three days before Peebs got his pulled. Thankfully Peebs has been fine being barefoot again because I don't know what my wallet would have done if I had to keep both ponies in front pads. 

Reserve champion the the open 2' hunters and short/long stirrup hunters

Cinder finally felt good enough for us to plan my first over fences show of the season at a schooling show at the end of June. I did have to politely ask Trainer M if I could jump a full course the lesson before the show, since I hadn't done that in over 3 months at that point.  She did set a course for me, but it was maybe 2', with no oxers, when she knows I've been wanting to move up to the 2'6". Every time I've asked this year for a private lesson to focus on jumping more/higher, she hasn't done it and was sometimes snotty about it. Like sorry for asking you to do your job. The show ended up ok, we were reserve in our two divisions, and won both under saddles, but it felt like we didn't deserve it. I wasn't happy with where my head was and the prep I had gotten before the show. 

I tried to justify Trainer M's attitude as personal life stress but I think I was being too generous. Other things at the barn started adding up and I was having to manage Cinder a lot more than I have in the past at this barn. She was going 7-8 wks between shoeings, when she normally is a 5-6wk girl and I had to keep bugging M to make sure she was done. She ran out of regumate and no one bothered to tell me when or how long she had been out when I discovered it. She also got put down on our vet's list for other meds I hadn't ordered and when the vet called me to ask how much of each I wanted I had to say I had no idea what she was talking about. And of course M raised her prices during all this. Why am I paying more when the service is falling apart? M was also gone at least two weeks a month from April to September so ID was trying to deal with everything herself and things were just not working. 

So what did I do? I signed up for a rated show in July. But we'll get to that in part 2 since this is getting long.