Recommitting, Reengaging and Revitalizing

So here I am post the summer from hell and I still haven't gotten back on the proverbial and literal horse. There are a lot of reasons I haven't gotten back in the saddle yet.  Some are easy to define, others not so much. 

My motivation to do more than just groom, pick hooves and feed treats just hasn't been there lately.  A lot of it had to do with coming down from the ultra-high stress bus that I had been riding for almost four months.  I lived with a high level of daily stress for so long that it took several weeks of little to no stress to bring me back to a baseline.  

Which is about when my desire to ride again began kicking in.  I started reading my Practical Horseman’s again, perusing the Dover/SmartPak catalogs, touching with longing all my good tack that is currently living in my bedroom as my tack room is also the guest bedroom. I started looking at my ponies with an eye towards what we need to work on, how we're going to get all the muscle we lost back and what we can do this winter to make riding easier. 

Essentially I found my riding mojo again, I found my riding love again, I found myself. 

I still have a month long training to do that will have me away from home from mid-November to mid-December. Which sort of sucks because I need to do the annual shaving of the wooly beast who, while he is definitely a Thoroughbred, is absolutely convinced that he is an Appaloosa/Welsh Pony cross. So while my other two, the OTTB mare and the actual Appy are just mildly fuzzy, Fox has nearly a full on winter coat already. 

So here I am laying it down in black and white. I am recommitting to my riding, reengaging with my passion and my pony and revitalizing my heart and my dreams.  This year we will go Beginner Novice, we will canter dressage worthy circles, we will do a clinic with someone great. We will go down to the North Carolina Horse Park and do the War Horse Eventing Trial.  We will be the partners that I know we can be.

I will commit to taking Cowboy to a horsemanship clinic and find our own partnership so that he can have a job and feel loved and needed. We will prance down centerline and wow everyone with how lovely a mover he is. We will do a cross rails jumping class and we will trail ride and have fun. 

I listen to a lot of audio books. Sometimes I listen to fiction, sometimes memoirs, and sometimes self-help.  There was one self-help book that talked about writing down or saying your goals out loud.  How these simple acts reinforce things in your mind and makes it easier and believable to achieve your goals. 

So here I am, this is the year we get off our butts and do all those things I've been dreaming of.  

Keep it Between the Flags everyone!