Vote for Us!!

A couple weekends ago, I dragged Ellie out of bed in the pre-dawn hours in order to put fishnets on a horse.


This horse.


This is Zymon, one of my favorite horses in the barn. He fractured his patella in a pasture accident, and is now laid up for months. He is also adorable and compliant, so Ellie and I came up with a costume and got Stephanie on board.

We're one of the top 20 on Eventing Nation.

Go vote for us!! (It's under the name Stephanie--it was a group effort, so she submitted it.) Help Zy find a way to contribute even if he's on stall rest for a few more months.

Funny Story

The competitors are all back from Galway, but since they got back really, really late last night, I was on my own for the first part of the morning. Stephanie texted to let me know which horses needed to go out and who to lunge.

As I was bringing the lunge horse back to the barn, one of the girls who works there calls to me, "Hey, your turnout horse jumped out. I caught him..."

My response: "Seriously?"


So yeah. You all remember the loveable Zymon, the AWS mutt. Apparently, he can jump a 5' fence from a standstill without touching it just because he's bored of his turnout buddy and wants to go hang out with the horses in the breezeway.

Oh, and to him it's such a non-event that he just stood there and let the nice girl catch him with no fuss at all. Darling bastard.


It gets funnier. I text Stephanie: "So Zymon can jump 5'."
She responds: "I know, that's why you have to turn him out -with- somebody."
Me: "I did. Then he turned himself out alone."

Ha! Quite funny, since no one got hurt.

In other exciting news, I might get to go to Thermal. OMG!! I totally wanted to, but I assumed as 'general barn help', I would be relied upon to stay home and take care of things. Nope, they want a groom.

Excuse me while I happy dance.

Wherein I Fall in Love

For the record: my life is amazing. Yes, I'm beyond busy and barely have time to sit down (shhhh, I'm working) but OMG I have a pony and a pony job and a real job and everything is awesome.

My official duties as barn worker are getting squared away. I'm responsible for turnout, grooming, feeding, and morning blanket changes. I also do other things as needed.

Today was brilliant. Stephanie told me yesterday that we were going trotting, which meant that I would be on someone other than Izzy, since she hasn't moved in yet. I told myself I was excited for a chance to ride a fancy trained horse and not terrified because they're all a bit nutty and we would be on a trail up a mountain.

Here's the horse I rode:

This is Zymon. He's a 6 year old mutt gelding who is training to be Stephanie's personal horse (I think). Mutt is technically defined as American Warmblood Something x Appendix. Despite his breeding, he is a lovely mover and quite sweet.

Also, he's flipping awesome on trails. This is important because 1) I am not and 2) trails in Idaho are fairly strenuous. Seriously. We rode up a mountain, down the other side, back up, and down again. It's trot sets, Idaho-style.

Despite being a cute young greenie, Zymon boldly lead the way most of the time. He's opinionated and egotistical and completely adorable. He's kind of like a corgi, minus the funny conformation. Dare I say it? Izzy has a small reason to be jealous, at least until he pulls a stupid gelding stunt. I must say, it was the most fun trail ride and/or trot sets I have -ever- done.

He had one semi-big spook right before we got on the trail at some birds flying up, but between my full seat breeches, his easy movement, and the completely amazing saddle I was riding on (custom CWD jump saddle. OMG), it was no big deal.

Why it's a bad idea for a tack whore to intern with a trainer with a lot of nice tack is a whole 'nother story for a different post. Wow.