Light at the End of the Tunnel

As you can tell from my serious lack of updates, this school year has kicked my butt! I haven't been able to catch my breath much less update this blog. And trying to find time to ride when I should be studying or writing a paper has been a tough task. This has been the first year that I have truly put a "hold" on my competition schedule for school and let me tell you, thank God I did! I would have drove myself absolutely insane if I would have tried to keep Black Prelim fit, go to lessons and keep up on school work. I have finally learned and admitted to myself that I cannot do it all! And that is okay. Instead I've been able to look forward going to the barn and when there was a two week when I could only get to the barn once a week- the look on Black's face when he saw me was priceless! He does like me! :)
As this semester is coming to a close and we're registering for classes next semester, I'm realizing my course load next semester won't be nearly as bad. This mean our competition schedule will be in full swing come February!! And I cannot wait! Black is back to his conditioning sets so that by mid January or so we will BOTH be fit and ready for a PRELIM horse trial by February. The plan is to take lessons with Beth Perkins while we wait for Amy Barrington to be back in action! Which I'm sure will be sooner than anyone thinks ;). I hope so because we need her and miss her desperately! I'm looking forward to working with Beth and I hope she can get us back on track. I have to say though our first attempt at lessoning with her did not go as planned! Haley Doyle and I planned to have a lesson with this past Friday and of course it was the first day in weeks we had rain. We waited for Beth's word and she said it was just too wet. About 10 min
utes later the sun came out (OF COURSE!) and she called back to say come on up! So Haley and I raced around and threw the horses on only to notice that Haley's trailer had not just one but TWO very, very flat tires. My trailer is tiny and would probably not fit Haley's 17.2h horse and Black but we figured it was worth a shot. Then I realized I didn't have the keys to the hitch. Crap. My boyfriend, Matt, had just gotten off work so he came and brought me the keys. By that time it was almost 12:30 and we had a lesson planned for 1:15 and it takes an hour and half to get to Tryon. We have a lesson scheduled for next Friday so let's hope things will go a little better this time around!

Fat, fluffy, ratchet broodmare to handsome event pony!

Black is clipped and got his mane pulled so he is ready to do something and go somewhere and so am I! We are so looking forward to getting back out there and kicking Prelim's butt! :)