Cob Jockey: Blogger Meetup, Part 1

March 3, 2015

Blogger Meetup, Part 1

I think it says a lot that when I got back from Bloggers' Weekend, I felt relaxed and not like I had been on vacation. Usually when you stay at someone else's house for a while, it's awkward, but I felt right at home at JenJ's.

Everything is bigger in Texas, including Jen's 1 year old Great Pyrenees, Gus. I weigh about 10lbs more than he does!

Also, seeing this outside your window is pretty freakin' sweet:

Brego and Paddy! I have a thing for well-set up tiny farms, and Wyvern Oaks is a seriously well set up and well-maintained place.

I had flown in to Houston on Tuesday, spent two days with my childhood best friend, then took the bus to Austin on Thursday. Rural Texas looks very much like my backyard growing up, with lots of cattle, cattleguards, and oil pumpers.

This is actually a picture of my backyard growing up.

After watching Paddington bring no game to his lesson on Thursday (actually it was very valuable for me to see, because my own pulling breed pony often brings no game to his lessons, and I got some ideas for dealing with it from Jen's awesome trainer) and getting to ride Brego in an arena during the lesson as well:

Detailed recap on serious Brego riding coming soon. He taught me a lot.

I spent most of Friday with Lauren and Genny, and got to ride Simon!

He is awesome, you guys. I loved riding him. He was forward, and happy, but I never felt unsafe, and he clearly knows his job and does it well. Lauren has really done a great job with him.

Then Genny and I switched horses and I got to ride former big eq horse Mia:

You see me rollin'? Literally, those stirrups are rolled twice!

She was a blast! It was so different riding Connor and riding her, I may as well have been on different planets. I don't ride horses very often, and especially not big strided big eq horses, so that was fun and different. I took a picture of her neck just because I was amazed at how long it was (proportional, I'm just used to looking at much shorter necks):

I apologize in advance for all of the clashing red in this picture. I think Jen about lost it when I showed this to her (she sadly had to work while we played with Simon and Mia):