Christmas Card

New Year

Happy New Year everyone!  Today was a beautiful day and a terrific start to the new year, for the second year in a row I woke up with a minimal hangover and the weather was fabulous-- about 65º F and sunny-- I had to take off my sweatshirt and roll up my sleeves after a little while!

Since Starbuck was so good yesterday and I rode her a little longer than I had planned to I decided to give her a break and get some cleaning done-- my tack has been getting a little grimey lately.  I also think scrubbing things by hand in a bucket is good for the soul every now and then, especially if you can do it on a lovely sunny day while watching hawks soar over the Sierra de Tramuntana!  So I cleaned all my brushes, two halters, some rags, summer gloves, leg protectors and my half chaps as well as Starbuck's water buckets and the brushbox, then I mucked out her stall and paddock, hiding some carrots in the fresh straw of her bedding.  It took longer than I thought so afterwards I had to rush home lugging a plastic bag with my bridle and other extraneous leather bits to grease this evening, but all in all it was a highly productive day!

Back home my husband and I welcomed the new year with a southern (american) tradition: Hoppin' john!  This is a dish of rice and black-eyed peas (since this is Spain I spiced 'em up with some Chorizo), along with greens (traditionally collard or turnip greens but we compromised with kale) and cooked carrot rounds.  Each food symbolizes a wish for the coming year: rice is for love, the peas are for health, the carrots are for coins and the greens are for paper money.  I'm not a huge bean fan but I sure cleaned my plate anyway!

Here's hoping the new year brings all this and more to you and yours!!!

Christmas Presents

My husband gives the best gifts ever.  Really.  For example, he made a lifelong dream come true by giving me Starbuck for my birthday this year, and always picks out something I really want or need, even if I'm not aware of it yet.  But pickings have been kind of slim lately and we had talked about skipping Christmas presents altogether this year, so I wasn't expecting anything extravagant.  Silly me!

Up until now I've been recording all the videos for this blog on my phone and either relying on friends to take videos or lodging my phone between branches of orange trees.  So when I opened the present I found under the tree and found a GorillaMobile flexible cellphone tripod I was superpsyched!  I've actually thought once or twice about trying to find one but hadn't mentioned it and am really impressed at what a thoughtful present it is. But as soon as I started trying it out, he said something like "Wait, it doesn't fit your cell phone perfectly, try this instead" and gave me another giftwrapped box... thinking it would be another version of the tripod I opened it and lo and behold it was a Samsung camcorder!  Wow!!!  It's got 65x zoom and all kinds of settings and it's really light weight and red... I love it!  And it works perfectly with the Gorilla flexible tripod, so no more bugging passersby to record training sessions :D

So as soon as it had a decent charge on it, I headed out to the stable.  One of the kids at the barn had asked me to ride his horse Gladys while he was out of town for Christmas, so I took her out and saddled her up: I don't want to get completely out of shape riding-wise, so I've been trying to ride at least once every week and a half or so.  Wow was it obvious she hadn't been out of her paddock in a while-- she had LOTS of energy!  She was also a little freaked out by someone else riding her and tried to see what she could get away with-- lots of head shaking and going too fast and she even got a few bucks in before I got her head up.  But it was fun and my back sure feels better-- I don't know why but cantering seems to do me more good than a chiropracter!  I also took a very long video of our ride to see how I can improve my seat (I need to keep my lower legs further back and NOT BOUNCE!!!) which I'll probably upload to Youtube but won't torture you with here.

Finally, I took Starbuck out for what I planned to be a fairly low-key session of longeing over some cavaletti poles, working on holding a circle and paying attention to what's beneath her feet.  But the dogs were barking, I had chosen the "scary" side of the arena and the wind started gusting, so it ended up being anything but chill.  In the end we got some good reps in, so I'm happy.  Here's the video, taken with my NEW CAMCORDER held in place by my NEW TRIPOD!!!

Hope you enjoy, merry Christmas everyone!!!

Happy Holidays

...from my family to yours!

"May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmasses be white (or green!)"

From Sarah, Sergio, Starbuck, Empanada, Bocata and Leia

'Tis The Season

That is, 'tis the season to feel guilty about not sending out Christmas Cards to my family and friends!  It's become a holiday tradition for me to plan to send out Christmas Cards and sometimes even buy the cards and the stamps (one year I got as far as actually writing on one or two of them), but never actually get them in the mail and this year is no different!  So I guess I'll have to beg my husband to drag out the camera, grab the not-so-jolly cats and pose in front of our cheesy Christmas tree, then e-mail the photo to everyone with our holiday wishes hoping that they'll assume that snail mail from Spain to the States is too prohibitively expensive to send.  Although this year we add an element of technical challenge to the endeavor: I somehow have to photoshop Starbuck in with us!  We'll see how it goes...

At any rate, for the upcoming years I've been scouring the web for the best horsey print-your-own greeting cards (also perfect for Facebook felicitations!).  Here you go:


Winter Holidays:

Valentines Day:

Birthday:

Halloween

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!!!!

Scouring the internet for random stuff about horses I've found a startling number of people who like to dress their horses up for Halloween.  Here are some of the best and worst costumes I've found (I'm not commenting on the cruelty or humiliation inherent in this practice because I'm laughing too hard):

From TheFW.com:

From TheHorseTailor.com:

From WishPony.com:

And let's not forget people and pets dressed up as horses: