Thirsty Thursday & Some QT with my guys!

Work work work. Its all I do. and it sucks. But, I'm making good money and I'm taking a 5 day vacation to New York City in two weeks, so I have chosen to not have a conversation about my hours with the floor manager until I return (perhaps I will need all that extra $$$ for the trip).

But, despite my 65 hour work week this week, I managed to go see my kid during my "dinner break" yesterday between my day job and a meeting I had to work for said day job. Granite and Reno both came up to visit me as soon as they saw me pull in. I grabbed Granite and headed for the barn bc it was starting to rain. I groomed him really well and noticed some crusty stuff in his mane. Upon closer inspection, I realized that it was a tick! EWWWW! Get off my horse you nasty critter! I removed the tick and washed, antiseptic washed, and antibiotic ointment-ed the effected area. Granite seemed un-phased by my shenanigans. As usual.

After a thorough grooming of my ugly horse-- I say this because I HATE his summer coat. He whites out and his pretty grey dapples turn brown. He constantly looks dirty, but its just his summer coat. He really turns into a pretty horse in an ugly suit in the summer. He also doesn't tolerate heat too well and spends all day profusely sweating. I think when its time to show, we need to find a lovely indoor winter circuit so we don't have to 'show-off' his ugly soggy summer exterior. But thats neither here nor there. I had some time before I needed to be back to work, so I brought out the itty bitty clippers to have some clipper practice. While the kid still erratically tosses his head about, I managed to get him still enough to let me CLIP his jaw line and throat latch. This is the first time we have actually managed to clip anything. So I will take progress where I get it!

Next we worked on some in hand work in our {huge} barn aisle. Becky must be working on some of this in the saddle, bc he has never gotten the concept of turns on the haunches until now. He actually crossed over with his front feet and gave me a pretty solid pivot. He is still pretty clueless regarding "squaring up" or standing as I dart around ala 'inspection". Fortunately, I plan to avoid showmanship at all costs, but next year I plan to show a local open hunter division, and most of the time to get high point awards (which he will obviously be in contention for, because? he rocks) you often have to suck it up and show in hand-- boooo. And it was raining, so I figured practice can't hurt.

Speaking of shows. Granite is cantering well and consistently moving in a collected walk and trot! I think its ALMOST time for me to begin researching to pick the perfect time/place for our show-ring debut! I will die with excitement! I am thinking late August. I want to be ready. I don't want to take him until I feel confident about being in the ribbons, because to be honest, I am a bit shallow and would be bent all kinds of out of shape if we weren't to finish in the ribbons in a local schooling show. I want to get some trail ride and hunter pace miles on him to get him exposed to working around different horses in different venues before we get in the show ring as well.

And in final news... TK (aka- Date) plans to meet me at the barn at 5pm tonight! I'm not sure if Becky is doing a training ride today or not, but if not, I will ride Granite as well. Tonight is my only evening off this week. TK is taking me to a minor league baseball game (I hate baseball but its $2 beer night and I like beer). I told him that we may be late bc I sure the hell plan to see my kid on my evening off then he said something about "the Gran-Man" and I asked when he planned to re-schedule coming to meet him. He said "why not tomorrow before the game". And I did an internal happy dance because Granite and TK seem to be the two men that can remove my waitressing stress and remind me that Life IS Good :)

Hope you all have a great weekend if I don't see  you before that. But perhaps I can manage a little TK meets Granite update. I feel like I remember writing a post about Granite meeting the LAST guy last summer. No guy has had the privilege of being invited to meet Granite since, so lets hope this time around it goes significantly better!

Also? Still no word on my camera! I am going to NYC for the first time in 2 weeks, and I MUST document. And I know you guys will shortly revolt without photographic evidence of Granite's progress, so I may comit my lunch break to ebay today and buy a camera... Heres to hoping.