Anyway, much has happened since my last blog post. I returned from my trip with absolutely fabulous memories. While it was not an academically challenging course, it definitely pushed me in other ways, both with physical challenges and mental barriers that I overcame. I felt like I really grew and found a love for travel and adventure that I had not embraced as much as I do now. My group was so sad to leave (especially since we were leaving 90 degree temperatures on the Australian beaches to come back to sub-zero midwest winters!) and I certainly wouldn't have minded staying a bit longer and seeing more of Australia, but I was definitely ready to come home see my family, friends, and of course my horse!
My second semester of my sophomore year went just fine. I got to get back in riding shape, took some challenging classes, and the semester flew by! I also applied to go on another J-term trip this coming year....I will be traveling in England! I am absolutely STOKED!
This summer was an absolute whirlwind. It was very busy (especially through July) but it was awesome! I did an internship with my horse's vet, Dr. Abraham, working 4 mornings a week, which was a great experience. I also put in some work hours at Hy-Vee to try to make a little more money.
Riding and showing my horse (Julia) took up the remainder of my time (or at least I was so tired at the end of the day I had NO social life), but in a VERY good way. It was Julia's first real season showing (she did one show last year, which ended with a pilot error in our stadium round) and I was so excited to see how she was going to react to her job! A little background on my horse-I got her in January of 2008, she used to be a racehorse (not a very good one, which is why I am lucky enough to have her :)) and I got her when she knew very little except the very basics. I've been working really hard with her since then and she's really grown up a lot and has a lot of potential. I was a little nervous at the beginning of the show season because we had not gotten to school any cross country this spring due to a minor injury she got just before my team went to Chicago over Easter weekend to practice on the course there. But off we went to Otter Creek in Wheeler, WI (one of my favorite events, it is beautiful!). This was her first show very far away from home because her first show last year was a very short drive, it was also quite a different atmosphere. We were entered in a novice division, and I had no expectations for placing, all I was wanting was to get Julia through the event with a positive experience and to leave with her feeling like her job is fun. She absolutely exceeded my expectations the entire weekend! She had a lovely dressage test, as she was still quite green (inexperienced) we hadn't worked very much on getting her to be more uphill and balanced on her hind end, so we lost some marks for being on the forehand, but she was so quiet and responsive! We got a score of 38.4 (or something like that) and were somewhere in the middle of the pack for placings. Before cross country I felt sick, mostly the nerves kicking in at the first show of the year, but mostly just hoping I would ride well enough to pilot my green horse around the course! However, I had nothing to worry about! Julia came out of the start box really looking at everything, like she was saying "woah Mom, what are we doing out here?", but she was so game for what I was asking of her! She looked at some of the fences but was never going to stop! She just thought she better clear them by a mile-just to make sure they didn't eat her. We definitely had some people laughing at how enthusiastically she was jumping, and some of the pictures look like she should be jumping things much bigger than we were, but she jumped around clear with just a handful of time penalties (which I was not concerned about, I took long lines to let her look at everything!). Stadium has always been my hardest phase, and as it was where we had trouble at her very first event I was pretty nervous. But once we got in the warm up ring, I felt much better, she warmed up great and I pushed my nerves away so I could really focus. Our round ended up being the surprise of my weekend! WE WENT DOUBLE CLEAR! She was quiet, focused, and she really felt like she was listening and trusting me about what she was supposed to do. I definitely had tears in my eyes after all three phases, I was SO proud of my horse, it makes me so proud to know that this is my horse who I've been training. To put the icing on the cake, we even ribboned. We brought home a pretty brown ribbon for 8th place in a division of over 20 horses, something I was not expecting after going into stadium in about 14th place or so, but that double clear round was one of the few in my division so it paid off!
Anyway, I won't ramble that much about all my shows I promise, that one was just very very special!
I'll update soon with a blog about how the rest of my season went and how my first semester of junior year is going so far!
