January is Flying By!

I don't quite know where to begin because its been so long since I posted. My (lame) excuse is that I told myself I should spend blogging time finishing my law school applications.... which meant something closer to "starting my law school applications" Unfortunately, I found loads of other ways to procrastinate which led to no blog, no applications done, but a lot of clean laundry and trying out an assortment of toe nail polish colors.....
In good news, I did well on the LSAT, employing a strategy of positive thinking on the day of the test that went like this: I'm eating my lucky twix bar, this is a really good sign! I wonder how many other test takers have twix bars for breakfast... probably not many. Too bad for them. I'm wearing my lucky jeans! I'm going to ace this! I then spent about 12 minutes on one logic game panicking, a strategy that turned out to be pretty innefective, but choosing answer C for all 6 questions turned out better than I thought it would. That was the low point of the test, luckily the rest of it went along fine and simply flew by in a flurry of bubble coloring and then bam, five hours later there I was done with standardized testing for life (hopefully?).

Boots did 2 beginner novices and was a star at both of them! As I look at the pictures from both shows, I find the disturbing trend of me jumping ahead... It looks like I'm telling Boots, hold on let me just check out this show jumping fence as we jump it I need to check out the paint job (by the way at the Horse Park and Longwood the show jumps are beautiful so I do have a good reason to look :) Boots was nice enough to canter along and not teach me a lesson by stopping or spooking at anything, but I definitely need to work on that! She loves cross country and I was slightly worried heading out my second time with her about control in my snaffle and very conscious about not getting speed faults, but after her enthusiasm (look it's a field, lets galloppppppppp) at our first outing together at the horse park she was very happy to canter along at a slower pace when we went to Longwood a couple of weeks ago.  They gave us time faults, which I'm sure we didn't have because of my carefully checking the time and coming only 15 seconds under, but the posted score didn't matter much because the point was for her to get a good positive experience which she did. Next up will be rocking horse as her first novice.
I have a second mare in the barn, "Cleo." She is here from Massachusetts to be sold, and I have gone from my standard of having bay geldings to now having 2 mares with Inet holding out as the only male, which I'm pretty sure he doesn't mind and in fact he seems to be enjoying gazing at Cleo from across the aisle.  Cleo is very flashy and athletic and had a great outing at Longwood, going double clear in show jumping and cross country. She'll do a combined test tomorrow as her first training level.
Finally, Inet got to come to the event at Longwood to hang out and have a relaxing hack. He thought the idea of a relaxing hack was hilarious and still laughs at me when I bring it up. Instead of any relaxing, he was his usual explosive self and threw in a new tactic of whinnying to Boots (who was back in the trailer and couldn't care less about Inet) as he leapt about in the air. It didn't help that cross country warmup was not as I had thought, finished, but there were still horses jumping and entering the start box and this was probably not the best sight for Inet at his first outing in a very long time.  The important thing is that eventually we got all four feet back on the ground and Inet back into the trailer, and as soon as we got home he reverted back to his typical lazy self.  Later that week I also succeeded in clipping Inet, by employing the strategy of positve thinking: The last time I clipped Inet required 2 doses of tranq. and a full on battle as he seemed to twitch awake within minutes and refused to stand still. This time I went in with the attitude "Inet loves to be clipped" and amazingly, it worked. Maybe I should write a book.... "Clipping my horse and how positive thinking changed my life and his" It might have been the fact that I used little clippers instead of the massive Oster body clippers and bribed him with as much hay as he wanted, but then again, it may have been the positive vibes I sent through the barn.... On that note I'm going to use positive thinking to hope that someone else has decided to clean my tack and repack the trailer and then I'm headed to Longwood in the morning!