Many moons ago I kept a blog off and on about my horse Amber. Actually, it all started with a blog I kept about the pony I leased before I bought Amber. Over time I lost interest in my blogging, but here lately I've been inspired to start sharing our tales once again.
A little bit about us. As for me, I'm a 26-year-old pre-radiography student, working as a kennel tech at a small animal clinic. In order to fund my horse addiction, I also teach lessons to a 12-year-old, as well as giving pony rides to a group of mentally handicapped adults once a week. If that doesn't sound busy enough to you, I'm also a wife and mom of 3 dogs!
The star of the show is Amber, my 13-year-old Quarter Horse mare. Primarily a competitive jumper, she is really a jack of all trades. I came across Amber in a hunter barn in December 2010 after my lease ended on my dressage pony, also the time which I cut ties with the dressage trainer I had been riding with. I still wanted to do dressage, but things just were not working for me anymore in that situation, so I ventured out on my own to find my very own unicorn. I hoped to find a new dressage trainer to ride with once I found said unicorn. Truth be told, I really did not have the riding/horse ownership experience I really needed to be horse shopping. At the time, I had a lot of riding related confidence issues (stories for another day!), and very little real experience with horse ownership. My riding lessons were very basic as a child, and the one horse I had owned as a 13-year-old had all her care managed by the owner of the barn I boarded at. And again, there were all my confidence issues - I was barely comfortable cantering. Amber was 6 at the time, but her papers were not found until the day I handed over the check for her, so up until this point I had been told she was about 9. I was on my own with a young horse. I was never able to afford to ride with actual decent dressage trainers, so I ended up riding with several wackos, before getting fed up with dressage and actually going back to the trainer who sold Amber to me. It was there we attempted to be hunters for a couple of years. Both Amber and myself were green with jumping. Amber had been started over fences for 3 months before I bought her, and my own experience was non-existent. She was very strong to fences, so progress was slow. My confidence issues were still an issue for me, and her enthusiasm for jumping was intimidating. Eventually, we did take steps forward though. My confidence and experience increased. However, the more I learned, the more I realized that Amber was better suited for jumpers than hunters. I took a chance and sought out a trainer with experience in jumpers, and the rest is history.
I'll mostly be covering my adventures with Amber here, but I'll be throwing a little bit of everything in. My student's progress, my dogs' shenanigans, daily life, etc. A product review here and there, perhaps.
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