A Few New Things

After being introduced to pizza-at-home yumminess thanks to Steph & Nicks awesome pizza stone, Mario and I got one of our own. Mario has made several delicious creations! This one had mozarella, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, tomatoes and artichoke on it ... and it ROCKED! I washed it down with Wingnut zinfandel from World Market. (which I have learned to my surprise is not represented on the east coast - why??)

I ordered Mario is own Hoof Jack, and it arrived today. What I think it means is that he's really an official hoof trimmer. With 2 stands (and 2 rasps, and 2 nippers and 2 hoof picks and 2 aprons and 2 sets of knives... phew! collected over the months) we can now truly work side-by-side. Before, one would have to do something else while the other rolled, or rasped down clinches from shoes or whatever.

I got my very own big blue wheelbarrow. Wheelbarrel? (cause that is how I pronounce it!) For the last 6 months or so we've been using one of the crappy, rusty, small one wheeled barrows from the ranch. Said crappy dealies are located 1/2 way across the ranch from my horses and I have to replace them to be a good barn citizen of course. MY wheelbarrow (named Jackson) is bigger and has two wheels on the front so you can wheel one handed while the other opens the gate to the horse's corral, or holds the pitchfork while heading to the next poo pile. Ahh... it's the little things I tell ya.

This morning around 9 we took the dogs for a walk along the Ventura Promenade. It was a beautiful morning and everyone was out enjoying the day and even a bit of surf... It's always a great way to start a day off.

Afterwards Mario went golfing and I went to check out a friend/client's trainer. Even though my horses live at a cowboy ranch, I am still a dressage rider at heart, and I miss the partnership and yes, discipline, of dressage. My favorite trainer has moved to Santa Ynez and even though she gives lessons in Santa Barbara, it's still at least an hour each way travel time... Not to say I wouldn't do it again, because Julie is worth it, but I wanted to check out this other trainer giving a lesson and see how it went. The facility is a place I used to board years ago. After a 250,000 renovation, it's hardly recognizable!! Truly impressive, but they used adobe and fountains, all native plants and lots of landscaping, so it has this relaxing organic vibe to it... I brought Bailey along (Bogey and Dylan were too pooped from their morning walk) and we got to watch a nice lesson. Unfortunately the trainer was using a headset with the rider so I could barely hear anything that was said, which is definitely a draw back when

evaluating her training... so I pretty much just had to go by what I saw the horse and rider doing. All in all I thought it was worth scheduling a test lesson with the trainer and trailering Jordan over, we exchanged cards and I am supposed to be contacting her. Should be fun!

Later this afternoon I went and rode Jordan who was a super good boy. I feel so blessed to have him... even after 2 weeks off I just hopped on and away we went. He goes right to this relaxed swinging trot on the bit... He makes me look good. ;-) Miss Faith's time is coming, I want to get her really back under saddle this winter. She is not like Jordan, though - she wants solid consistency, and I just know I can't offer her that right now. But soon! Because I'm working on taking my life back a little with the trimming schedule. I am practicing saying, "no". GULP!

one of our horse's water tank koi fish

ugh - sorry everyone - I messed up the formatting on this post and don't have the patience to go back and fix it. Hope you can sort it out and still understand what's what!