My Other Love

Horses are one of those things in life I would never want to live without.  They are that ever constant thing that my soul needs to be whole, happy, balanced and at my best. (Read my previous post on horses here.)  Before having a baby I would have said that they were my favorite thing ever.  While I was in Okinawa horses were my job, my life.  Now my baby is my job and my life, but I still make a huge effort to make it out riding whenever I can.  It's not every day like it once was, and sometimes it's not even every week. But, it's something that I love to do whenever I get the chance... ie whenever Brad gets off work early enough for me to escape to the barn for a couple hours.  

When we moved back to Pensacola I hooked back up with a wonderful rider and friend that has a beautiful barn and horses and she has a wonderful, generous heart and lets me ride her horse, Dublin, whenever I can. 

 

Last month she invited me to go with her to a dressage show and I got to go to my first horse show since 2007! It was wonderful to be at and in a real show.  In Okinawa I coordinated our barn's schooling shows and loved doing that, but it was nice not to be in charge at this show, and just get to go and have fun.

 The Blue Angel Dressage Show was all weekend and at a beautiful equestrian center in Pensacola.

   

 I was thrilled to just be there, to see all the beautiful horses and riders, and getting to compete again was so much fun!

 

The same horse beat us out of every class, dang it.  We'll get em next time!  So, we ended up with 4 2nd place ribbons, but for our first time out we got good scores and great feedback from the judge and like I said I was just happy to be there.

Louise, Dublin's owner, riding her horse Emi.

Brad and Paxton were such troopers the whole weekend.  It was great to have them there! 

 Paxton got to meet his first horse.  Dubbie is the most extremely chill and reliable horse.  I mean, I rode him 7 months pregnant.  He's the nicest, sweetest horse ever, so he was the perfect horse for Paxton's first horse encounter. 

 I can't wait to get Pax up on a fat, fluffy pony when he's big enough!!