RaWr like you mean it

Lowkey plan on walking into work Friday with hibachi. Will my boss be pissed? Possibly.

With Summer arriving it feels so strange that I’m not preparing myself for the summer shows. Instead I'm getting myself ready for the summertime guard season and anticipating my never disappearing scent of chlorine as my perfume instead of smelling like showsheen all the time. Last time I guarded at the park it wasn’t uncommon for me to stop by the horse show before my shift just to say hello to my barn before they competed. Now, that Showgrounds is no more and honestly I haven’t said more than a few words to anyone from my barn in quite a while. Do I miss it? Yes. Did I need time away from this world? Also yes. Not going to lie, this sport hasn’t always been the best for me mentally. There is always someone who has something terrible to say, whether it be a trainer or a boarder at the barn, and sometimes it gets stuck in your brain. So I do think the time away has helped quite a bit. Especially with me becoming a lifeguard. It has forced me to be more assertive and be at least a bit more confident in myself. It takes a lot at times to deal with people screaming in your face and then save another, or vice versa. I definitely grew a lot due to this job and I think it will carry over into the horse world. But yes, I do still struggle with the things that have been said/done to me but I'm at least trying to deal with it rather than be in a deeper hole than I was before. So whose to say when I get back in the saddle? It could be in the next few months or even closer to a year. I honestly don’t know (And with my work schedule ramping up, it'd be probably a few months at the soonest I could actually go out to the barn)  Not even entirely sure why I felt the need to put this out there but here we are.

Watching old show videos and I’m struggling to actually look at them. All of my rounds were so cringe worthy.

Honestly I’m frustrated with how my barn has dealt with the corona situation. It basically favors a few and makes no effort to hide it?  Since the rule in North Carolina is that there cannot be gatherings of over 10 people the barn is restricted on how many people can be there. Obviously boarders get priority which makes sense. But the problem is that there are a few riders who do not board or lease get to ride all the time and all the others who don’t board/lease are out of luck and cannot come to the barn at all. There are pictures of these people all over facebook and instagram so its not hidden at all so it feels like the barn does not care about the rest of us. At this point I’m about to go get a few rides in at a facility that I used to go to (the trainer I had is no longer there). I probably won’t get much done other than some basic flatwork or trails but at least I'll be getting some time in the saddle. I’ll be the only hunter rider surrounded by a ton of eventers . But luckily the owner of the facility trusts me and said I can come out and get pony time basically whenever I want.

I’m one of those people that become fiercely protective of their trainer once I get to where I truly trust them. I now keep hearing different things from these two boarders who rant about my trainer all the time. Especially this one who is an eventer who came to a hunter barn and complains about how it is a hunter barn. Like what the fuck? If you knew coming in that it was a hunter barn it doesn’t give you any room to bitch about it later. Then there is small things that have pissed her off to where she even came up to us at a show just to bitch about it to my trainer and really wondered why a few of us glared at her when she showed up. There is a time and place and that was not it. Or how about you talk to the people who were literally at the barn on what you wanted fixed. If we are at a show then my trainer can’t magically fix it when we are so far away.

Show season starts this weekend!