Satin Ho Life

I've been absent lately for no particularly good reason. In a nutshell I've just been too lazy to write a coherent post, so haven't even bothered trying to write a non-coherent one.

The Dopie Horse is still alive and kicking. He's five days into an impromptu vacation and so far has been behaving himself. I hope that lasts for another week because I won't be getting back on him until I come home from visiting my mom in Illinois for the holiday. Historically he's turned into an ill behaved rage monster when not in steady work à la Bobby, but BM put the fear of God in him the other day when he tried to start shit in the afternoon, so hopefully he doesn't terrorize the poor barn workers too much. 

He got worked a couple times at the beginning of last week before I pulled the plug and quit on him. Neither one of us wanted to work with each other, and even Farrier picked up on us being grumpy assholes to each other when she did his feet. So vacation it is, and hopefully we're both in a better mood and ready to work when I get back around to riding again. 

penguin season is officially here to stay

In the meantime though, over the weekend I got a fabulous satiny reminder of how amazing my little #childgenius is when he's not just being a child.

clean sweep!

My GMO's year end award banquet was on Saturday. We sat with the owner of the barn that hosts the schooling shows and she was aghast that we'd driven two hours just to eat (a gross) dinner and collect a couple ribbons. Clearly she's not well acquainted with me.... #satinhoforlife

We also sat with a couple other women who cleaned up, and our table was draped in tri-colors by the time the evening was over. I haven't met very many members personally throughout the year, so it was nice to meet some new people in a setting where no one was distracted by riding or taking care of their horse. I'm basically two hours from anywhere in any direction, so I don't have a lot of interaction outside of shows. Hopefully now that I know a few more faces I won't feel like such a loner loser next year. 

But what we're really here for is the ribbons!

and the shiny!

My GMO does year end awards for recognized shows and their own schooling show series as well as a couple other odds and ends. Opie was champion for both the recognized and schooling shows at Training, and I got the above platter for my rider achievement award--which is way fancier and more fun to have on display than the certificate USDF sent me.

year end ribbons. also is this creature not the cutest thing alive?
yes. yes he is. 

In annual tradition, I hauled our year's worth of ribbons out to the barn for a photo shoot. I got there and Opie was hanging out at the fence with his forelock knotted with burrs in a unicorn horn, and BM and I were like, "Yep. Clearly a fancy ass show horse."

wow so noble. 

Once I got his forelock untangled and wet down, the mud washed off his legs, and the majority of the shavings picked out of his tail, he got dragged outside where Hubby quickly had to take over holding him while I decked him out because he does not have the patience for standing still shenanigans. And then he was not impressed with being outfitted in flapping things.

"fuck you guys."

But he eventually got bribed with enough candy so it didn't look like we were torturing him.

candy solves everything

Overall Dopie ended up out of the top three only three times this season: his first show where he was fourth in his first ever test, a fifth at his first recognized show, and another fourth at the recognized show where he did his test screaming for his friends and being a tense childish asshole. He was high point two different times with an 81% and a 74%. 

The last thing I'm waiting for to truly close out the season is to see if we did well enough to qualify for one of the joint GMO awards--we have three GMOs in western NY and they have a couple of awards for people that show across all of them. Those won't be announced until December though, and I have no idea how we did compared to anyone else so I'm not going to hold my breath for those. 

And who cares because I have enough satin to bathe in at this point if I want!

should have put the double on just to hold everything.
#childgeniusproblems

Okay, that's enough bragging and being annoying. Back to radio silence as I venture out to the midwest and hope my horse doesn't terrorize anyone too badly while I'm gone.