Plan to Move Forward

First off, I finally have some Izzy pictures. I'm sorry it's been so long without them. It's just hard to take pictures of oneself while riding and she's hard to photograph because she won't just stand still and let me walk away. She wants to be in the middle of what's going on.

See? She's so darn cute. Also, what would you call the marking on her face? It's not in any horse book I own. It's too long to be a star, too short to be a stripe... You can't see it, but she has a tiny snip on her upper lip, too.

Here's another picture from the same day:
This was as close as she would come to posing. In this picture, she's wearing a collegiate plain raised snaffle bridle with a full cheek single jointed bit. That's an Ansur KonKlusion saddle with a random girth I borrowed, and a neckstrap in case I feel insecure. She is such a good looking horse.

Here's today. (The previous shots were from a couple weeks ago.) I successfully put on wraps without making her legs look like potatoes, so I left them on. I had just been putting them on and taking them off the past few weeks to get the hang of it. I'm not a fan of nontradition colors in general for dressage/jumping, but my dad got me these years ago as a Christmas present. I figured I should at least learn how to put wraps on properly before I branch out and get some in a more conservative color.

As you can see, I obviously needed conservatively colored wraps for all the formal work we had to do today. Yes, it was bareback day #2. Day #1 was yesterday. It's rained so much that the arena is a total mess. I like to use weather like this to just muck around and work on little things.

And here's Klasi Renee', Izzy's mother and my beloved old OTTB. She's 17, had three gorgeous babies, won just about everything there is to win, and still going strong. She doesn't like having her mane pulled, and at her age, I don't mess with it. She's done enough.
Izzy was Cassie's (her barn name) first baby, then Tristan's Fortune, the gorgeous holsteiner gelding whose video I posted her a month or so ago was the second. Her latest was by an awesome Friesian stallion, a little filly named Natasya. I'll have to take more pictures of all the babies while they're still around.

As for the rest of our problems... I think I'm going to rearrange how I address them. The U Gard that someone (Kate?) recommended is the least expensive, so I figure I'll buy that and give see how it goes. Worst case senario, I'm out $25. I will continue to play with padding once we start riding with a saddle again... probably next week, since I'll be out of town again this weekend visitng my inlaws. The chiro is going to have to wait until next time, which will be much easier on my bank account. Hopefully, it will be more fully recovered from the saddle purchase by then. Still, winter's coming on quickly if the weather's any gauge, so we may be done with any serious riding until spring anyways.