That time I ran away from the internet

Hey, y'all. We're still here.

It's been a long time without an update here, and I don't want any of you to think the coyotes got us. Nope, instead life took me offline a bit (in some ways figuratively, in others literally). Anyway, now I find myself in 2022 trying to start over here. It's kinda hard, as you might imagine.

I guess I could recap the end of 2020 and all of 2021 here, but that seems a bit wildly ambitious and, perhaps, unnecessary. Though, I'm not sure our story here is quite done being shared, and that requires some catching up. Let's start with the cliffs notes:

1. At the end of 2020, we somehow won All Breeds for The Jockey Club's First Level Adult Amateur division and came in second overall for First Level with a median score of 64.771%. It's still wild to me that we accomplished such a crazy goal, and managed such a competitive score.

Literally just so proud of him.

2. I moved to the country, specifically to a 50 acre ex-soybean farm purchased by my horse's landlord to become a new horse farm. It's been quite an adventure so far (including a few months with extremely sketchy internet and questionable heating during the coldest part of the year), but I've really enjoyed living walking distance from my horses again. Plus, the dogs are eating up country life. Literally. They eat a lot of mice.

These fields are full of pastures and barns now.

3. Bast and I threw ourselves to the wolves judges at Second Level in 2021, and the season turned out much more successful than I imagined it would in the spring. In fact, we ended up coming in Reserve Champion overall in the Jockey Club All Breeds at Second. That's two years as a surprisingly competitive pair. Second Level is #worstlevel, but we not only survived it but thrived. Plus, this was my first self-sufficient show season in over 5 years. Which leads me to... 

4. I bought a trailer, and finally completed my hauling rig! This Brenderup trailer was owned by a friend of mine, and has had extensive work done on it recently. Plus, it's been changed to a one horse set up. It isn't much, but it's perfect for my needs. When hauling it behind my VW Touareg, we jokingly call it my Very European Rig, containing my very American horse. I can now haul out for regular lessons, which has made a huge difference in both Bast's training and comfort level with traveling. We really only do very local hauling, and I adore my setup for this.

I think the fact that my leopard horse likes this trailer is the best part.

4. Of course, life also threw a lot of things at me. One of the biggest was changing jobs to one that allows me to work from home permanently. This has made the move out to the farm sustainable in the long term, and allowed me to pick up some shifts as we've moved horses onto the property. It's been so fun to watch this property evolve over the last few months and really start to come into its own as a boarding facility. Plus, there's actually nothing better than seeing horses out your office window.

Yeah. That's the view I have when I open my eyes in the morning. Well, after Asterid stops licking my eyeballs.

Hilariously, I actually seem to have less free time now than when I lived in the city and commuted 2 hours total every day to see the horses (plus, another hour  total for work). It seems I can expand my to-do list to fill any amount of time, which really shouldn't come as a surprise to me. Unfortunately that left blogging at the bottom of my list. I'm trying to change that, so watch this space. However, you can keep up with me on a near daily basis on my Instagram stories.

Hope to chat with you all soon!