An Introduction

I have never done a blog before, at least not one for something so personal to me as my riding and goals for my horsemanship.  I am starting one now mostly because I believe I am living an exciting part of my life.  For the first time in my life, I have the courage to live out loud.

This blog will mainly cover my Reining journey.  The horses that I will talk the most about are Mr. Mighty Bandit (Chance) and Smokin Smart Leo (Jax).  Chance is my go-to, my number one, my team mate, my partner, my best friend.  He is a confidence builder and a fighter, always up for the challenge.  Jax is my three year old filly.  I was lucky to steal her at a rock bottom price at 4 months old.  Both horses are going in the Reining direction.  Chance is already there and doing well despite the fact that I am his teacher and have blaring deficiencies in my abilities as I learn.  He literally has the patience of Job with me.  Jax is just beginning her green training, so maybe I will be a little more prepared to teach her the right way the first time and really go a lot further with her in my Reining endeavors.

Firstly, a little about me.  I have been riding my entire life.  I have an extensive background in riding Hunt Seat.  Hunt Seat was, is, and will always be one of my greatest passions.  When done correctly, it alone has the ability to fine tune a horse and rider like no other discipline.  All of the great roots in any discipline are best served by having the ability to ride Hunt Seat horses.  I will die believing that.

Freckles Cojo (Shelton) and I
Appendix Quarter Horse
May 2002

Reining for me began as a pipe dream in 2002 after I bought Chance.  I used to love to watch him play as a yearling, sliding in his stops, rolling back on the fence line and switching leads all by himself.  I used to think to myself, "yeah right, you wouldn't know where to begin."  Well, I was right back then, I didn't know where to begin, but NOW, at least I know where to look.

I attended my first NRHA show in August of 2013 with Chance and while we are a LONG way from where a finished Reining horse should be, we had a great show and I was proud of the hard work he and I did.  In his first class, he scored a 67 &1/2, which was absolutely phenomenal in my mind where we could have scored a 60 or worse, a 0.  The second class he did, we scored a 65, but we went home with our heads held high, having learned a lot and we met a lot of really nice people.

First Reining Show
VRHA Slide Into Summer
August 2-4 2013

So this blog is an attempt to document this journey and hopefully it will serve to inspire others to chase their dreams as well.