Halloween Horse Show

The Fall Horse Show earlier this month was a huge success. I worked my tail off, so I'm thrilled that it went off without a hitch. I think everyone had a really good horse show experience and had a lot of fun.

The week before the show is always crunch time. It's long hours at the barn and a ton of prep work at home. This time it was extra time consuming with 4 injured horses to nurse on top of everything else. But, as always, the kids make it so worth it.

The afternoon and evening before the show is the Horse Show Prep time where the students come out and help get the horses ready for the show day by giving baths and braiding manes and tails. My least favorite chore of the day is putting up the dressage arena... loathe. But, it was my third time, so it's easier each time. I topped the dressage letters with yellow and orange fall flowers (that's my favorite part). The whole barn area was decorated with a Halloween theme. We hung up lanterns in the trees, taped Fall and Halloween decorations everywhere and draped Halloween garland around doorways and around railings. I had a bucket for bobbing for apples and carrots. It was wonderful!!

The morning of the show I set out all the Halloween plates, cups, food/drinks and decorated the picnic tables. Of course there were buckets and boxes over flowing with Halloween candy on every table. I made each rider a Show Folder with a program, their show number and copies of the courses for the other events. Each rider got a goodie bag with Halloween Chex Mix when they checked in and received their folder.


The morning started off with dressage. The students had practiced their tests so many times and many had memorized them. We did USDF Intro Test B, USEF Training Level Test 1 and my young determined and totally focused 9 year old student did a USEF First Level Test 1.




We had a "short stirrup" class of two 5 year old and a 6 year old. Totally adorable. All these youngsters came away with blue ribbons since the judge just "couldn't make up her mind." :)


Next was the jumping classes. We had a trot jump class and a trot/canter jump class. The jumps were prettied up with fall flower boxes and pretty fall leaves decorating the standards.

Each participant received a horse show trophy. Ribbons were awarded 1st-6th place for dressage and jumping.


And then came the really fun part. The Obstacle Course. This fun class wasn't judged 1st-6th, but rather each participant got a certificate award for their best aspect of the course. And riders were encouraged to wear Halloween costumes! We had witches, cats, bat girl and bat horse, Mario and Luigi, a hippy, goddess, vampire, fairy, lady bug and other fun outfits. I was a candy corn/arena cone. Madie, the other instructor who's pregnant, was a cat who swallowed a fish bowl. Alexis, the judge, was Rainbow Bright.




The riders were timed and had 10 obstacles to navigate such as getting a treat out of a Halloween bucket and giving it to the horse, going over a wooden bridge, halting in a square, a small jump and "around the world." This was so much fun and such a good way to end the day, with lots of laughs! And one of the horse show moms was sweet enough to give the me, the other instructor and the 2 judges flowers at the end of the day.




So, no one fell off. All the horses were angels. No one was crying or a poor sport. It didn't rain. I think this was the best show yet!

1st Birthday

A very happy first birthday to my spiky lil monster, Gojou (pronounced Go-Joe, his name means Joy in Japanese!). My lil Goji Berry turned one today! He has blessed my life in so many ways. I love him to pieces and enjoy his cuteness on a daily basis. I haven't blogged about him as much as I would like, but he is the usual subject for many of my pictures. Speaking of pictures, all these were taken with my brand new Canon super duper fancy camera. My generous husband bought his for me recently. Maybe because he felt like he needed to get me a lil something after buying himself his deployment present, a PRS Custom electric guitar. It is quite beautiful and was the first subject for my first photo shoot with my new camera. This is my first "real" camera and I'm just starting to learn how to use it. I love it already!

Anyway, back to Gojou. He is a grumpy lil guy and has been very resistant to my love and affection. So, he just has to deal with my force-loving him. I thought he would grow to love me as much as I love him, but it's been a year and I'm pretty sure that his personality is quite established. Goj loves to sleep and eat. That's about it. He does love running nightly marathons on his wheel too. But, when it comes to me he'd rather just go back to sleep. Even so, I enjoy his funny little personality and I love taking care of him.

Today I celebrated his birthday by giving him an extra helping of meal worms, a nice fresh cage and then making him fresh and clean too by giving him his usual bath. Goj is supposed to like baths, but he just can't seem to get into it. Still, I find it adorable, and he needs regular baths, so he just has to deal.

Today Goj reminded me of how much he hates baths by biting his bath towel and hanging on! Crazy Hedgie.


Goj also got a pink shirt to let the world know just what a crazy Party Animal he is. Wooo yeah. Party. Don't worry, Goj is quite comfortable in pink. He just showed how manly he is with the towel picture.

#1 reason why I love having a hedgehog: they curl up in the most adorable balls.




So, happy birthday to my not-so-baby-anymore hedgehog, Gojou!

Riding Workshops

In preparation for the Fall Horse Show we held a couple of workshops to help the riders get ready. The horse show judge gave the students some advice and pointers on what she would be looking for on show day. I think the kids really benefited from these rides and I think they had a lot of fun too!

The jumping workshop went off without a hitch. The horses and riders rode through a jump course that was very similar to the course planned for the show. All the rides went well, we stayed pretty much on schedule and the horses were well behaved.



The dressage workshop the next weekend was a different story. Essa was extremely sick at the start of this clinic and I was dealing with getting the rides out for Alexis, helping all the kids, dealing with Essa's colic and a million other things at one time. We got about half way through this chaotic clinic before it became obvious that Essa was not getting better, but worse and that the kids needed to leave right away. And I've already told you the sad outcome of that day. Poor Essa, I miss him every day. So the last half of the dressage clinic was made up the following week. Despite the Essa situation the rides went well and all the riders got to practice their dressage tests.

I never thought I could ever have this much fun working!

Okinawan Afternoon

Last month (yes, I am so totally behind on blogging) a friend of mine asked for company as she went shopping for items to re-do her living room. I gladly went along and offered my advice that we go to Nitori. Nitori is like a Japanese Ikea and I had been meaning to figure out where it was and check it out. Nitori was pretty easy to find and offered up tons of ideas for making our Okinawa houses comfortable homes away from home. I relaly need to go back over there and order some of their custom made curtains for my apartment.




We also went to a home store in Awase and it was a massive furniture store. I couldn't help giggling at the tiny Japanese style furniture, couches and chairs. They looked like children's furniture. But, the Japanese are much better at conserving space than Americans are.



After all that shopping my friend and I were hungry for lunch. I took her to a place I had been a few times before and totally love. Green Green is tucked back in a neighborhood and offers beautiful views of the green jungle trees from their large deck. The menu is limited, but I always get their Pho and lovelovelove it. My friend enjoyed their green curry. We splurged on dessert and split the apple pie a la mode. Amazing!




Such a fun afternoon out shopping and enjoying the company of a good friend!

And We're Back

Oh my goodness. I swear I'm still here, alive and kickin'! Sorry about the disappearing act, but my life has been taken over by the horses the last few weeks. I am usually totally busy before a horse show, but this time I was stretched to the limit with 4 horses hurt requiring hours of daily care and a packed lesson schedule. I was getting far too good at giving injections, soaking hooves in buckets and wrapping standing wraps on horses legs while they were on stall rest. Ugh! But, we are out of the woods now for the most part.

I have so much blogging to catch up on. So many new posts are in the future. But, I just had to share this highlight with you. Makoto, my favorite horse at the barn, is better. He had a horrible abscess in his back hoof. Got a horrible infection requiring rounds of antibiotics and steroid injections. We battled it out daily with me forcing him to soak his foot in a bucket of epsom salts and water and him completely refusing to keep his foot in the bucket and him refusing to hold his hoof up for cleaning and wrapping (he did slightly get used to this eventually over the weeks). About 2 weeks ago I found a stick about an inch and a half long stuck in the frog of his hoof. Yup, that was the culprit. I got that bugger out and Makoto improved the next day, and the day after and the day after. He had been on stall rest for quite a while and when I finally let him out he was so adorably happy. Grabbing up mouth fulls of grass between kicking up his heels and squeals of joy.

Last week I let him run around the arena needing no encouragement from me. He was feeling so much better! He would gallop around, stop, roll and get up and gallop some more. Made my whole heart swell with love for this amazing, beautiful horse.

Then yesterday, after a month of fighting daily for him to get better, I finally got to ride him again.


It was just a little baby ride to see how he would do, but he was completely sound and feeling great. I was smiling ear to ear, so incredibly happy to have "my horse" back. I'm elated.