Cob Jockey

As you can probably tell by my lack of posting lately, I haven't had time to even see my horse recently, let alone ride.

For the first week of March, I was at my company's sales kickoff with 7,999 of my colleagues in Vegas.  Kickoff is the one time a year I get to meet co-workers in real life, and it was critically important to my career to introduce myself to as many people as possible, even if it was at midnight by the blackjack table.

(Who am I kidding, ESPECIALLY if it was at midnight by the blackjack table.  #techindustrylife)

Also #techindustrylife: they hired Imagine Dragons to play a private show, and I got pushed up to the front row by nice taller gentlemen who wanted to make sure I could see.

That led to getting almost no sleep all week, which led to my run-down immune system greeting a stomach bug with open arms starting Thursday night, which led to a hellish flight home on Friday, which led to epic jet lag on Saturday, which combined with daylight savings time making it a 4 hour time change instead of the usual 3 on Sunday made me feel just awful all weekend.


(But I'm not complaining about DST because YAY DAYLIGHT!)

Even though I still wasn't feeling great, I managed to drag myself out to the barn on Sunday, which was the first time I'd seen my horse in a week.  Have I mentioned lately how grateful I am for boarding care so good, I don't even have to check in while I'm traveling and everything is just fine?

So sleepy.  So cuddly.

Lifting the curry to groom him felt like an enormous, slow-motion task, so a productive ride wasn't happening.  But I figured just being on a horse would make me feel more like myself, so I tossed the bareback pad on, played the Cardinals spring training game radio broadcast, and we toodled.

As we toodled, I thought about how long it's taken to get this horse to this point: that even when I feel like crap with slow-mo reaction speed, and it's windy and the doors are banging against the indoor and he's not wearing a saddle, I can trust him to powerwalk on the buckle, neck rein, stop dead when I say 'whoa', and do it all cheerfully with his ears up the whole time.

Ears up!

It has taken a LONG. TIME. to get to this point.  But it means more to me than anything he could ever do in the show ring, because off and on for the rest of my career, I will have weeks like this one, where I haven't ridden consistently in weeks, showing seems like a distant memory, and I barely have the energy to unpack my suitcase.  Having a horse that cheerfully serves as a four legged couch when I need it and doesn't do anything stupid really, really matters to me. 

Thanks buddy, you're the best <3