Making it Official with Horsenation

So if you've been paying attention on Horsenation today...you may have noticed quite a few posts from me:

13 XC Jumps That Will Make You Pee Your Britches

4 Tips and Tricks for Buying Horse Stuff Online  (yes, I did sneak a link to my saddle's Ebay on there)

10 Crazy Analogies Instructors Make

That's because I am now an official part-time freelancer for Horsenation.com! You'll be seeing 3 articles from yours truly each weekend. Yay!!! I knew learning Wordpress for work would come in handy...

I may be calling upon the Collegial Equestrians out there for help from time to time for crowdsourcing responses in a contest sort of thing. It seems like a lot of you were interested in the hunter hairnets I mentioned once so maybe that would be a good prize!

Or if you have an idea that you think I should write up, GO FOR IT and let me know please! I am terrible at thinking of ideas. Once I have a headline I can work with it, but honestly I think that will be the bigger challenge than actually writing.

So yup! I'm very excited about that.

On the Midnight front, things are good. We had a nice little ride today--I was hoping to do a jump group lesson, but overslept and the stadium arena was borderline too wet anyway. So today wasn't anything really groundbreaking or spectacular, but just some solid work on the things I've been learning. Shoulder-in, leg yields, setting up good transitions, etc. It was just what the doctor ordered--I had been feeling really down about the saddle on Tuesday, and just worried in general about his ground manners and the wash stall issue. I feel somewhat responsible for his blowup since I was the one there, and it affects the other leaser's ability to bathe him, even though it wasn't intentional. But having just a normal ride made me feel better.

We've been working on ground tying (not like I have any idea what I'm doing). His owner brought a rope halter so I've been teaching him to put his head down from poll pressure, and then just leaving him to stand there while I walk around his stall or the arena. He's giving me a lot of licking and chewing, and was great at standing still in the arena, not so much in his stall today. But he did have some pretty gnarly rain rot on his leg that he kept trying to itch, so that was likely the culprit. He did better once I put some Bio-Tek soothing stuff on it. He is definitely one of those sensitive-skinned TBs--it's been one thing or another all summer, with the wet and heat and something in his field he likes to roll on that gives him hives.

So that is that...I may not be able to promise a weekly post here with the Horsenation stuff, plus work and Midnight, but I'll do my best. I like having this as a sort of a progress log and I LOVE reading your comments!