#welllington

oh wellington... 😍. lars didn't ride san francisco`s cable car in our 3 years of living there. now we had 3 days in wellington, so he had to make them count! we went up to carter observatory by tram and strolled back down to the city through the beautiful botanic garden.

I had a job in Vermont at the beginning of November. It tuned out to be not at all what I wanted, and I didn't like how they took care of the horses. I was brave enough to stand up to the boss, and I left after two weeks.  At that point, it was way late to be looking for a job for the Florida season, but I thought what the hell. I emailed one of my favorite riders, and that same evening (like three hours later) the barn manager called me because I had sent them my resume hours after the barn help they had lined up told them she couldn't. My ridiculously good luck lines up again, right?! I got a room rented in the same house as a good friend of mine, another plus. 

And I love my job! I've only been here a week, but I can tell it's going to be my favorite winter yet (not hard to be better than last year, that's for goddamn sure). All the horses are super nice. High quality animals, and nice manners and personalities. At my job last year if you went in the stalls you were in genuine danger of being stomped at or bitten and they all had terrible ground manners, but with these horses the only danger you're in is of being snuggled to death. There's a young horse who is a half brother to Valegro and literally all he wants to do is put his nose on your shoulder. I've moved up in the world, from working student to groom. Meaning I won't have to do barn work about 5 days a week (I will on weekends), I just get to groom ponies all day. 

Yesterday I even got to ride! Trainer let me "warm up" ( she didn't bother getting on afterwards haha) a horse she has for sale. I don't know much about him, but we did some passage and a totally accidental line of ones, so I'm assuming he's at least schooling the grand prix. It was a very good lesson. I learned stuff I had never heard anyone tell me before, and a lot of it made sense. I'll definitely have to have a bunch more lessons before I can really understand it all, but still. I'm encouraged.