Fadedwords

Dear GFGs,

Hey, how ya’ doing?  I hope well.  I know I shouldn’t look at websites that have horses for sale, but sometimes I really cannot help myself.  And most of the time I don’t even find anything that looks good!  So that has to count for something.

However, today I was looking at a site and I found a horse that is gorgeous and would really work well for me, and looks like a good mover.  This one, unlike Remy (second horse down!), is even close enough that I could go try him out!  And my riding instructor knows his owner.  How perfect is that??  He’s also even less expensive than Remy, at $7500!  BARGAIN.

GFGs, you should go look at Granite Ghost, or Deuce HERE.  Go to the “For Sale” page.  He’s the second horse on the page, black with a gorgeous white blaze on his face.  He’s 16.2 hands tall!  That’s exactly what I need.  Don’t let the western saddle fool you, because to me it looks like he’d be a great hunter prospect.  Also, I’ve been thinking about trying my hand running barrels, and this guy would be a great way to start.

This is how I look at it GFGs: Eventually I’m going to run out of lesson money.  I can’t, in good conscience, keep accepting money from friends to pay for it.  If I had a horse of my own I wouldn’t need to pay for lessons!  I could just go ride.  So I’d need enough to buy Deuce, as well as enough to pay for his board until I could get a second job.  I’m not even asking you to send 100% good fortune my way… just enough to get me through until I can pay to feed him with money from a second job.

Reasonable, right?

Think about it.

Love,
Kate

I apologize in advance… this is an insanely long entry that will likely confuse 99% of the people who read it because it’s all about riding!

I had a riding lesson yesterday that I had been looking forward to for a long time.  Thanks to some bad weather on the weekends, and then my back going out, I hadn’t ridden in over a month.  I had missed it tremendously and was ready to get back up there.  I was somewhat dreading it as well; lengthy absences from riding make it a bit more painful when you start up again… and I’m not a big fan of my body hurting.

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Elizabeth IMed me this morning and asked if I would want to ride today instead of tomorrow.  I said sure, because I’ll ride whenever given an opportunity.  I also know that most of her other riders are from NC, and our current weather is harder for them than it is for me.  It’s pretty cold out today (30 degrees, with lots of wind), and kind of damp and icky.  Being from upstate NY, I’ve ridden in ten below, so this isn’t so difficult.

It was a good lesson.  The ground was soaked from what seems like constant rain lately, so we didn’t jump or canter.  We did some really good trot work though, and I feel proud of the way I rode.  Elizabeth gave me a pair of riding gloves that she made for me.  They say, “I <3 Missy” in black puffy paint.  Too cute.  They kept my fingers toasty today.

In case you were wondering what a person looks like after they ride in serious blustery wind and cold… this is it.

I had a riding lesson today, which was very exciting.  My family is here and they haven’t seen me ride in about 10 years.  My friend Tammie also came, something that means a whole lot to me.  It was so nice to have so many people who care about me there to see it.

There are a ton of videos, and quite a few pictures…

You can see all the pictures HERE

There are several videos and I’m still going through which ones I want to upload to Vimeo.  I have scanned through and picked the following.

This is my second fence in two months.  Not too shabby.

Good Jump from Kate Moynihan on Vimeo.

The first time over in this next set isn’t so great, but the second and third are really good and I’m very proud of them.

One Bad, Two Good! from Kate Moynihan on Vimeo.

I’m very proud of my lesson today.  I feel like I did some really good work, and had Missy going very well.  It was definitely one of my best lessons in a long time.

A month ago I sat in TG*I Friday’s and cried because my friends handed me a card that granted me an extremely generous gift.  They paid for me to return to horseback riding, something that I honestly didn’t think was going to be possible for me for at least a year.

Today I had my first lesson back…

Missy was a little pokey today, which was astonishing.  We did some ok work… nothing to write home about, but had a great time.  I even rode with longer stirrups than I’m used to, and didn’t die!!  I’m proud of the way I rode, simply because I didn’t look out of control and I didn’t feel out of control.  At the end of the lesson I even asked Elizabeth if I could do one big canter up the long side of the field.  She said I could (one of the things I love about her), so we took off.  Missy absolutely flew across the field.  I was up in my two point and I couldn’t stop grinning.

It was the absolute best day I’ve had in an incredibly long time.

You can see all of the pictures of the lesson HERE.  Steve also took a video, which you can see HERE/