Happy U.S. Thanksgiving!

 And today I am especially thankful for the critters in my life!

Thankful for the Beastie!

Also thankful for the other ponies that have taught me so much...these two in particular:

Rhapsody: Never forget you

Lassie

And the other animals...

Keesa, the Great Cat of the house

 

 

 

And Tobie, the family Collie

River's taking a bit of a break till my Christmas holiday (two more weeks!)--he's been off for a while  already so I figured I'd make it about 6 weeks so he could have an official "vacation." Not that he particularly needs one, but y'know...it's not like I'm riding a great deal anyways! Might as well make it sound good! ;)

Still scheming things to write for your entertainment (more like my entertainment), so we'll try not to make it too quiet till then!

What You Do When It's Too Dark to Ride

So the lack of posts is because, well, we haven't been doing much. At all. And I doubt we'll do anything this weekend because it's supposed to rain, and get cold. Yuck. So I thought I would do some random posts about other things, and here is the first one!

Briana and River's List of Things to Do When It's Dark

Take pretty pictures of the sunset as you pull into the driveway!

Get out your flashlight and try not to freak out going into the dark dark barn...

Make friends with the kitty

 Make friends with all the kitties...we have six!

Rake the aisles...these are the part-board horses' stalls

Pasture board stalls...River's stall is first one on the left.

 Take awkward condition shots, and eat!

He actually ate without making a huge mess yesterday, shocking.

Winter Withdrawals, & Contests!

So I had a nice post and Blogger ate it. Take two...

Okay so first of all, Jen at Cob Jockey has a great post on how to prep your horses and barn for a tornado! I don't know about you but I never learned such things. However, living in TN-a.k.a-the-new-Tornado-Alley, I need to learn about them! So check it out if you live around tornado country!

Warning: a bit of a whine ahead. But contests at the end! So you can skip there if you want. ;)

It is November now.

November from my room.

It's warm (sometimes, comparatively), mostly yo-yo's between 60+ and 30-40 degrees, but oh-so-rainy.

I am going through riding/lesson/jump withdrawals. Lol. I haven't jumped or had a lesson in six months (May 9, I checked, lol). Haven't seen Coach since July or August (though we do keep in contact by text). But it is sooo wet and rainy, and I don't have the time to ride except on Fridays and the weekends, so it seems a bit stupid to me to try and take lessons when I'm not going to be able to really do my homework between lessons. I dunno, perhaps I'm wrong there, set me right if I am? February-ish it should warm up and the days should be long enough that I can ride evenings again. That's only a couple, three months. What's three more months when you've already missed six?! I can give Riv's the winter mostly off, it's not like he's going to mind. ;)

I go back and forth, really. I miss Coach, I miss riding regularly, I miss jumping every week. I'm mostly alone at the barn now, feeding and grooming in the dark, and it's a bit lonely. I can't afford lessons every week anyway, but we've got our homework done--River's sound, he can do walk/trot/halt/back transitions fairly well (when I ride him the way he likes--softly, gentle hands, and sit lightly, haha). We need to work on our canter but canter is my hardest gait and so I need some help to figure out how to help him through it. But I'm not sure it's fair to ask for a lesson when I'm not going to be practicing much in between lessons.

Good thing I love my Beastie because I'm not spending an awful lot of time actually riding this semester! :P

Beastie says, "Teach me more tricks-for-treats!"

Oh and contests! So many contests!

So, first Amy is having a giveaway for awesome saddle soap at Slow and Steady Wins the Race. I really need to clean my tack, so...yeah. Hope I win! haha
Hawk is having a SmartPak gift card giveaway at Forging Fiction. SmartPak is always awesome!
And Equine Snob is having an EquiSpa gift certificate giveaway at My Equine Odyssey! This stuff looks amazing!

Wow! :D