Half way through the series

Day three and Spyke was, as always, awesome (I really need a new superlative). We won the first round, I messed up the second and the last two were really, REALLY nice except he pulled a rail in both. Slightly disappointed at the rails but the rest of the jumps were place getting jumps. VERY happy about that. We are now lying second in the series, only one point behind the leader. The next round is not for 5 weeks. Bring it on!!!! I am having a BLAST!!!!

Still Awesome

Spyke is still awesome!!!!

We had our second show hunter day a few weeks ago and Spyke got a third and a FIRST!!!!! How proud am I??? Not only that but it put him at the top of the leaderboard!!!!! Look:

I had another lesson with Tracey Page this afternoon and it was fantastic. I feel like I am learning such a lot from her. I was jumping like a muppet to start with but was going MUCH better by the end of the lesson. :-) Of course Spyke was just lovely. At one point I completely lost my reins over the first jump of a double but he just kept trundling along and got me safely over the second. He is such a good boy. Have to say that I am COMPLETELY knackered now though!!!

Another SH comp this weekend. Fingers crossed I can keep my act together!!!

Lots of Awesomeness!!!!

Spyke is AWESOME!!!!! AWESOME I tell you!!!

We are having such a nice time (Touch wood that it continues). On my birthday I deceided to treat myself to a show hunter lesson with Tracey Page. The lesson was AMAZING. It was like everything I had been told about my position suddenly clicked in my head. Helped a lot by the fact that every time I got my position right Spyke really, really responded. It was totally awesome. There was also a fair amount of tanking and bucking but Tracey worked me through it.

I had the lesson on the Thursday and I was entered for my first show hunter on the Sunday, what a perfect move it was to have the lesson just before the competition. Spyke was superb on the day. His practice round was pretty rough, threw in a stop at one and then 'discussed' every jump after that but once he had that out of his system he was great.

We did 3 rounds (over teeny heights but they still looked big to me) and got a third in the first class and second in the second!!!!! I was stoked. (And more than a little stunned as they were quite big classes). Spyke's rounds though were SO kind and my 'new' position helped everything. I am still buzzing more than a week later.

Then on Saturday just been, we did a SH clinic with Tracey again through the Waitemata Riding Club. It was such fun and Tracey was stoked at the improvement in Spyke and I even in just a week. :-) At the end of our lesson she made Spyke and I jump last so that she could put the jumps up. We flew over them at 90. I am so excited by how our jumping is going that I am boring everyone around me to tears but I don't care LOL 'cos I am buzz buzz buzzing!!!!!!

The Lesson

The Competition

The Clinic

I'm back!!!

It has been a while!!! Things have been very quiet recently which is a really good thing in so many ways!!!! Brina has been quite well. She had a few siezures over Christmas, sometimes two in one day so she is now on Phenobarbitone and it seems to have made a HUGE difference to her. She has had NO siezures, NO reaction to the drugs and her vomitting has almost stopped. I am SO pleased!!!

Sammie is great, she gets a bit creaky some days and little bit absent minded but she is looking great.

Tai is FANTASTIC. I must find a pic of him (or take a pic) as he is just a happy wee soul. :-)

Spyke is also fantastic. We had a wee change in circumstances with the horses. The grazing at Kristina's became a little tenuous as the owners sold off a block and then started talking about putting the rest on the market so Kristina and Ben have moved to a FABULOUS place in Waimauku. While all the uncertainty was happening my friend Candice found a block to lease and asked if I would like to move the boys on. It was perfect timing and is just fabulous grazing!!!! There is a concrete tie up, with a hose (the small things count!!!), there is a huge tack room and a big flat paddock that is perfect for riding!!!! The land doesn't seem to get muddy which will be fantastic for Tai this winter. The boys are in a little herd consisting of Tai (The Boss), Spyke (The Boss' flunky), Ed (Candice's lovely boy) and Biscuit (Bottom of the pecking order). They are soooo good together!!!!

The major upside of the move is that I am able to school and jump again. I hadn't realised how much I missed that but both Spyke and I are LOVING getting back into it and we have our first show hunter comp for well over a year next Sunday. Yay!!!! I have also booked Thursday off as I am going to have a lesson with Tracey Page to get us back into the swing of it before the comp. I am SO excited about getting back into everything.

I have also been riding Biscuit which is just a BLAST. Today we did our first little jumps and she was sooooooo sweet.

I have also been able to do a bit of baking. New recipes include ginger kisses (YUM) and marshmallow easter eggs (even YUMMER!!!!)

That is all my news (off the top of my head anyway) for today. Hopefully I will be a bit more regular with my reports now that I have more fun things to report on. :-)

Oh yeah, and I have lost 13kg since I last posted. :-)

Tai January 2012

Easter goodies

Tai and Spyke checking out the new digs!!!

Pics and more

Spyke's 'broken' foot

Tai looking way better than he did.

Silly me!!!!! I was looking for a couple of pics to upload and as I was looking through my photos I realised that I DO have things to talk about!!

The Rugby World Cup

Currently the RWC is in full swing over here. This weekend is the quarter finals and up until now it has been just great. The atmosphere is buzzing and people are just having a lovely time. :-)

I took the opportunity to go to the opening celebrations at the waterfront here in Auckland, as did 199,999 other people!!!! It was MAYHEM!!!! I ended up spending about an hour and a half sitting outside the railway station waiting for Tina who was catching the train in (I had brought the car in that morning and managed to park it not far from the waterfront). It was really interesting sitting there watching all the people wandering past.

Once Tina and her friend had arrived we headed down Quay St towards the viaduct where the big screens were. This was NOT a good plan as the other 199,999 other people seemed to have the same plan. We ended up in a massive crowd where you just couldn't move unless everyone moved and it actually got quite scary. We did however eventually manage to extricate ourselves from the throng and were more sensible in our route choices after that. We ended up sitting over the Wynyard Quarter (a new addition to the Viaduct) where we were able to watch the opening ceremony on a big screen and we had a FANTASTIC view of the fireworks. It was amazing!!!!!! We stayed for the start of the NZ Tonga game (had to see the hakas) and then shot home to watch the game on my new, fab-u-lous 42 inch LCD tv. :-) It was a really neat evening and would have to be the best fireworks I have ever seen in NZ.

Trip to New Plymouth

I also had a whistlestop trip to New Plymouth with Tracy. She was over from Melbourne so we grabbed the opportunity to go down and see the latest Estcarp litter. We shot down on the Saturday afternoon, dropped in to the motel, popped in to Pukekura Park to see the lights (they are on for the RWC), caught up with a bunch of people for dinner and watched the end of the Australia Ireland game which Ireland won!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!

On Sunday we headed to Midhirst to huggle puppies before racing back up to Auckland.

September 2011

It has been a while (as always) since my last post. I COMPLETELY blame Facebook for that!!! I also don't have a huge amount to talk about. It has been a long, hard winter. It was very wet and very, very muddy.

Spyke has come out of the winter with very soft feet. This has resulted in LOTS of abscesses and to add insult to injury, just as I was getting him back into work and he was going BEAUTIFULLY he did a big yahoo in the paddock and manged to stomp on something really hard and has damaged the sole of his foot. :-( So he has been bandaged for the last two weeks. I am hoping to ride him today (fingers crossed) but I think that I will only be able to road ride for a few weeks which is just a REALLY disappointing statr to my season. We have already missed two competitions that I would have like to have taken him to and I suspect we will miss a few more. :-(

Spyke a few hours before hurting his foot. 

Tai is a box of fluffy ducks. He too had a hard winter though and at one point he dropped SO much weight SO suddenly that I thought I would lose him but after shovelling LOTS of feed into him he is now doing well again and is happy and bouncy. :-)

The dogs are well. Brina (touch wood) has done nothing terrible recently and is well , happy and bouncy. Sammie had her 'beauty sopt' removed this week and is looking fabulous. :-) Actually, it is a bit swollen so she looks like she has collagen implants but it seems to be healing nicely and she too is healthy and happy. She does have a degenerative spine thing though which means that occasionally she will move in a way that hurts but we are managing that.

Other than that I am delighted to say that there are no dramas, long may that continue!!!!!!

Tai at the end of winter. Note: this is him looking better!!!!!

Apologiews for the pictures being all over the place. I just couldn't seem to move them around successfully today.

Addendum

On a not so good note poor Christchurch has had a hell of day!!!

I was chatting with my friend Wendy on Instant Messenger and giving her a bit of a hard time for not even noticing a 4.3 earthquake when suddenly typed (badly) 'Huge one' I wasn't sure what she meant but then I realised that there was a huge earthquake hitting. She swore but kept typing, telling me what was happening. It seemed to go on for a LONG time but eventually it stopped and when it came up on the seismic drums it turned out to be a 5.5 - NOT small!!!!

A short time later there was a 4.4 and I was feeling REALLY sorry for Christchurch. Suddenly Wendy swore on the IM, said that it was a REALLY big one, that it felt like the house could come down and that she was off. Watching that one appear on the drums was just awful, it took me back to Feb 22, you could just tell it was big. Sure enough it was 6.0.Andrew felt it in Hawkes Bay!!!!

 No-one was killed, a few people were injured and some more buildings fell down but I think the mental strain is starting to show, people are fiunding it harder and harder to cope with the ongoing fear and uncertainty. I so feel for Chch.

The drums this afternoon: