My baby's first b'day is rolling round so quickly

Holly is now just over 10 months old can't quite believe its nearly a year since she was born, I am sure when I was pregnant it didn't go that fast well it didn't feel like it anyway...here is my baby girl on her favourite toy...This photo was taken on the 17th august, 10 months old.....Sooo cute....

My new horse

I have recently purchased a new mare called Autumn Light ( show name) she is a 4 year old Warmblood stationbred cross. Not that I was ever intending to buy another horse well for a while anyway but I had been out doing our local winter dressage series on a friends horse and I saw this mare that a friend of mine was riding and I happen to mention she was nice, long story short she rang me and asked me if I would like to purchaes her and so in the end I did. I did wonder what the heck have I done but end of the day I thought well what the hell I have not had a decent horse for a long time and even though she cost me way to much money I am hoping for big things this season....Just gotta work in a preganancy somewhere there as well!!!?????...We have just last weekend competed at our first competition and was surprised to find myself having a second and a fifth placing, roll on the 10th October the next dressage competition.

My afternoon of judging

Yesterday was probably one the of the hottest days we have had so far and I had volunteered to judge at the hunt clubs first ever Hunter show/ribbon day.

I am so glad that i wore shorts and a light shirt, I was really unsure about what to wear as a judge but with the weather as it has been of late I opted to go the summer way.
I had to judge the Pleasure horse ring. I have to say when I was doing the shows which was about 15 years ago, there wasn't such a thing as green horse and pleasure horse classes, the pony ring was pony ring and they had some classes for different height s and the hacks and hunters were just that, and once a gain they wwould have a few different classes for the height, and light weight/heavey weight hunter, but not sperate actaully rings, anyway, I get there and go to the ring and there is about 10 people entered in the class, most of them were kind of learner riders, or first outing horses, with riders not that great riders but coming out for a bit of a outing.

Most of the horses were well turned out and the so were the riders. the day went pretty well and I tried to give everyone a ribbon but boy it was hard to judge as they were all pretty even riders and not one horse was outstanding from the rest and when I asked the riders to prepare to canter and canter on it was a bit carnage so had to yell trot!!! pretty quickly.
By the end of the day I was so hot and bothered I had sweat running down my face, and back and my sunglasses were all fogged up, I would hate to think what the riders were like under all there jackets and stocks etc.
When asked before i left if I would do it again next year I was yeah sure, but I would rather be riding myself if I had a horse....will see..

The low down on the race horses

Davids (fatherinlaw)season hasn't started off the way he would have liked, the horse we had together Tuppence well she just didn't make it as a race horse, although she had the determination she just wasn't fast enough, so she has gone to live her days out with a nice lady up in Pukekohe, I really would have liked to have had her but having a baby and a foal it just wasn't going to happen.
Now Katie has done her tendon the the new trotter he had has gone lame and he can't seem to determine where its coming from. So Now only have Macy star to train, and to top it off the man that was helping him stopped coming so I jumped back in there to carry onand help and have hurt my back so I am now out of action as well...

Even though the horses all seem to be falling apart, and myself, I went up to the stables today and the horses were all running around bucking and kicking out so can't be too much wrong with them, you couldn't see them for the dust(literally!!), all this hot weather the ground is just a dust bowl. Macy races this Tues at 2pm so fingers crossed something good goes for Davids this week, he sure needs it.

going down to the rodeo

On saturday we had our local Urenui Rodeo. Rowan was working all day and that night as we had a wedding on at our restaurant, so I went down to see how long Holly was going to last.

We had sponsored the local riders barrel race so I really wanted to get down there to see that as one of our staff was riding in it. As it turned out Connie actually won it (photo of her attached), she was ridig her lovely quarter horse stallion so that was pretty cool as there was a heap in the event.

turned out I stayed for the whole day as Sally knew that health nurse there so I got to use the rooms at the community centre to feed and change Holly so I was stoked to have had a whole day out and about and seeing the rodeo which I love to watch.

The bull ride was pretty cool to watch but the broncos how good were they at bucking out!! On the Fri nite before we had watched them bring the horses in on the truck and Sally jude and I were all saying how nice some of them looked well after watching them buck you wouldnt want them!!!.....

my very cheeky colt

Went up this morning to muck around with my colt, thought I had better get back into handling him since he hasn't had much done for over a week or so.

He was a right ole so and so. tried to bite me every chance he got( think thats just a young horse thing anyway) but he is very quick to come up with his front legs if he gets sick of you pulling him around the yard or he just decides that no I don't want to turn this way and I am not going away from my mother!!...

Am going to have be quite hard on him I think, but how far do you go with a young horse as in if they nip do you smack them or will it make them very wary of you so I really have to figure these things out.

he is still cute though......

Back in the sulky

The other day I went up and helped out David with the race horses. Its only the second time I have been back in the sulky since I was pregnant. I drove lara(I am in the bright yellow), she is an 8 year old trotter and she is such a sweet horse. Out onto the track we go and only after a few metres I realised that I could so easliy fall out of this sulky, it was Davids old racing sulky from years ago, its wooden and the whole time I felt like I was just going to bounce out of the seat. The morning wasn't the best, the weather was pretty grey and the wind was terrible, felt a bit caotic out there in the blustering wind, with Wit driving Macy singing away to his same Elvis song he sing over and over again and David trying to call out to us to get us to do different things but we couldn't hear because of the wind, Katie(the horse David was driving) was steaming off as soon as anyone got to close she thought she was racing, because I was behind them all I was getting was mouthfuls of dust and grit. You might wonder why I did it that day and did I actually enjoy it well I just had a ball out there, I think I was laughing most of the time because I thought I was going to bounce out of the sulky, it was one of those days when you just thought something is going to happen, but thankfully it didn't and we cut the training short because the wind was so bad.