Where has the time gone?

The move to the new barn in January was a great decision. Cody has settled right in to life at the barn--he is in his stall with a fan during the hot part of the day, and is out in a field from afternoon until morning.

We've been riding! It was a slow start as I still really needed to build my confidence back up but we've made progress. I found a gal to take some lessons from and that helped a lot--just having someone there to not let me chicken out. We have gone from being nervous to trot all the way around the arena to cantering laps confidently.

Fun stuff lately is that we've gotten to go on a couple trail rides with a nice lady I met at the barn. She has this great QH gelding named "The Town Buzz", aka "Buzz". He's been a great trail buddy for Cody. Although, first time we went on a trail ride Cody decided Buzz was walking too slow and took off in the lead at a nice forward walk. The trail we've been on is just a nice, shaded (important in Florida!) loop around a lake. We've been there twice now and plan to go back again tomorrow. Fun thing about this lake is that there is an area where you can ride (or lead) your horse down into the water.

A view of the lake

Cody and Buzz

Hubby climbed on Cody and went for a pony ride

Cody and Buzz get their feet wet

The week around Memorial Day, my mom came to visit!  Hadn't seen her since Thanksgiving.  We had a great time :)  On the way home from picking her up at the airport, we stopped to see Cody.

Mom says hi to Cody

I found a dressage saddle, not sure I'm totally happy with the fit, but it's hard because it still seems like he has no topline.

Cody was mesmerized by his reflection in the glass

That gives you an idea of what we've been up to :)

Oh!  Hubby and I have also been working on losing weight, I've lost almost 40lbs so far!  Still have approximately another 40 to go, but hey, it's progress :)

Just for the heck of it, here is a couple pics from riding today.

Trying to get to a spot for a pic

Love that brand!

It's Summer already

Where has the year gone???  I have been terrible about updating this this year as you can obviously tell.  Tomorrow I plan to have a good horsey day so I will take pics (what is a blog post without pics?!?) and write a nice update.  Now, however, it is nearly 1am and I am sleepy!  So good night and see you tomorrow :)

The New Year

Okay, so it's a few weeks into the new year, but thought I was overdue for a bit of an update.

Design of blog needs work but the template designer was driving me nuts so I will tackle that another day.

Cody spent about three and a half months at the self care barn. I was able to get some weight on him and he was looking good--just one problem, nowhere to ride unless I just wanted to ride in a big field. Now, if he were further along in his training I suppose that could have worked if I didn't mind riding in the dark all the time. In the 3 and a half months he was there I think I climbed on him twice, maybe three times for all of five minutes.

So the hunt was on for a barn with an arena and lights! (Actual covered arenas seem very rare in south Florida). Looked into one place that had an arena but no lights and was sort of co-op type situation, but it was further away. Looked at another barn that was more than I'd really thought to pay in board but they had an arena and a round pen and best of all, they had lights! So I took a closer look at what I was actually spending on my partial board situation and when I added up the cost of board, feed, and gas (plus the time to go there twice a day) it actually came out to basically the same as the barn that had what I was looking for. So arrangements were made, a trailer ride was found, and on January 1st Cody moved to his new home.

He spends the afternoon and all night turned out (they are working on finding a good fit so he can go out with a buddy in a field with more grass), there is a fan in his stall, he gets fed well (no skinny horses here!) and I can go to the barn after work and ride!!!!

Now for the riding part. In the 4 weeks that he's been at the new barn I have ridden more than I had in the last 6 months. We can walk, trot and canter in the round pen, and I have walked and trotted in the arena (I know, I should just canter out there, but it's a big arena and I'm working up to it). We have been practicing one-rein stops, flexing left and right, backing, going over ground poles and all that fun stuff.

I am trying to find someone I can take some lessons from to help build my confidence and give me some direction with Cody but in the meantime we continue to plug along.

Now if only I could figure out my saddle dilemma! More on that in my next post :)