Here We Go!

Okay, I'm back. For real this time!

Thankfully, my horses have seen more of me than you guys have for these past couple months. I haven't ridden a whole lot -- good weeks it's a two or three times, bad weeks it's once or not at all. But, they get exercised pretty much every day.


So here's all that's happened since last time I was around:

• I'm now officially done with my first term of college. I got three A's and one A-, so my 4.0 is toast until I pick up a few A+'s to make up for it. It has been a lot harder than I expected.
• It's COLD at the barn. I hate winter. They're cooped up, wearing blankets, water's frozen, ugh.
  
• Both horses are doing wonderfully. Pandora is in perfect weight, and while you can tell she hates being cooped up, she's never rude and she always has a pleasant expression on her face. McKinna is a little more upfront with her cold-weather displeasure, but she too is doing well.
• I went to a few more lessons and then took quite a bit of time away from lessoning just to work on school. I should be taking a lesson tomorrow though (unless the predicted freezing rain tonight makes it impossible to get out to the barn), so I promise pictures from that!
• I passed my D-2 rating for Pony Club, which required basically no studying or anything. Next up is D-3, but I'm not too worried about getting it done right this very instant.
  

That picture up there is from last weekend, when the cold started to really kick in. I feel like a bear -- I don't want to go out to the barn to ride, I just want to be warm! Nevertheless, duty calls.

Pandora's been doing just wonderfully. The more I work her, the smoother she gets, and her canter is really improving. I'm going to take my first lesson on her tomorrow night, and I'm hoping we can try her out over a few low fences to get a feel for what she's like.


So here's the deal. Next term is going to be about as hard, if not slightly harder, than last term. But I want to stick with this blogging thing - I've really missed it - so I'm going to promise you guys one post a week. Some weeks it'll be more, but I'm going to maintain a minimum of one per week. Hopefully I'll get back into the swing of things and writing posts up will get easier.

Here's a video from one of the lessons I went to last month. McKinna was doing wonderfully! Lately I've been focusing more on Pandora. It's hard to work with two horses at once, which I'll talk about in my next post.