Oh goodness… I can’t believe I haven’t written since the end of 2024!

Definitely a lot has been going on this year so far, but at the same time, not much for me!

The winter was a rough one…with a month spent “land locked” and not able to move the trailer due to the snow/ice/bitter cold situation. Skyler and Drum had little riding and hit a wall in February/March together. I knew she needed to work with Tom and Drum to connect better and we had that opportunity in late March. She came back energized to keep at it, and there went my riding plans! I really had hopes to get back to endurance riding this spring, but most weekends were spent with Skyler and Drum riding and working towards her goals in showing, or at soccer. I think outside the clinic weekend, I’ve ridden Breeze less than a 1/2 dozen times this year. In addition we’ve been battling some thrush in the right hind making him sore, but hopefully on the path to do healing that here soon.

I tried to get this, even just the paragraph above, out in MAY but to no avail. Funny enough, we are recently back from another clinic with Tom in mid July, and Jaime and I were chatting a few days later and she mentioned the word Sacrifice and I realized I never launched this post titled just that!

So I guess I will start anew, now more than half way into 2025 and this has certainly been a year. Going back to the title… I am not bitter, but like all moms I got torn in so many directions and ended up sacrificing a lot of my own goals and riding time this year. I had little ride time to work on things with Breeze between where we left the March clinic to coming into July, and it showed. We are pretty much “stuck” right now with working on his blowing through the request to stop from anything greater than a walk. I bet you can guess how that might impact group riding and why it is so important we get that going for us. Skyler on the other hand, made huge leaps in her and Drum’s riding together and was trying to get him to open up into a canter; she did get a few steps but mainly just some really fast big trotting. They are coming along and I think she finally has come to terms with it being a project to get to the shows she wants to vs. the just show-up and up do. She had a nice first show with him, then a not so great one. We found an alternative “fun” show series for them to get more experience under their belts for the year, and she had a good first experience there. She wants me to try showing Breeze too 😶

We are now on the tail end of summer break, with the kids headed into 8th & 11th in 3 weeks! Asher ended up needing a revision surgery from his wrist fracture 2.5 years ago but hopefully will no longer have pain from it and get back to practicing driving so he can get his license in December! (maybe) He had wanted a job, but the surgery and casting put a damper on that.

There are times I really miss Sully (OK, really I miss him all the time) … I miss the days of not worrying about what kind of terrain or who/the type of people are around us riding. I always have to consider these factors with Breeze. Too much open field, and horses/people that like to boogie without regard for others, and I could be in a world of hurt and distrust again. I know it will change… it is a long slow process but I sure miss taking off Fridays to go camp and ride at all the fun options around us.

I’ll try to keep my updates more frequent again!