Deep Freeze

Well our mild winter ended and we were thrown into a week of temperatures around -30 C/-22 F or colder with windchills reaching -50 C/-58 F a few days. YUCK!! So I did not get much riding in. Just lots of checking the horses (they live outside 24/7) and making sure their water tank heater kept things un-thawed (which it did! I have floating tank heater from Peavey Mart, cost me $25. Best $25 I have ever spent! Kept my huge tank un-thawed throughout that whole snap of extreme cold!). Other than that, lots of sitting by our wood stove, snuggling the dog and drinking tea!!

This week things are warming back up. My dad is going to come out either this weekend or sometime next week to put shoes back on the boys. With snowball pads and studs. Our roads are icey (I have to condition mostly on roads) and we still have 2 months left of winter so they'll need them as I want to start conditioning ASAP! The 2012 ride dates are up and our first one is May 19 & 20. I am aiming to do a 50 with Player and a 25 with LJ.

Since things have been quite boring and frozen here lately, I'll share a couple more massage pics :) Working on miss Molly. Such a litte lady!



Change of Plans

Well, remember in my last post how I was thinking about starting the boys into conditioning this week on Monday? Well, plans changed! I had a friend contact me with an emergency situation she needed help with. Her mom's horse was in bad shape, he coliced the day before and now was so stiff he could hardly walk. He was in bad shape. The vet ruled out any major injuries and suggested that he may have slipped and fell on the ice, and that it was a soft tissue issue. They live in a remote mountian town with no massage therapists near them. I decided to head out Monday morning for the 5 hour drive to help him. I stayed overnight and worked on him Tuesday as well, and then headed home as I had to work my "real" (aka not so exciting) job on Wednesday. So my boys conditioning plans were put on the back burner, and I was happy to do so :)

As I said earlier, a new website and blog are in works for me. I am VERY excited about it! On Sunday I had an appointment with a couple other clients whose owner is a photographer. She was kind enough to do a "massage photoshoot" for me for my website. Here's a little preview of me working on Pablo!

Our winter weather seems to be back...temperature wise anyways. It was +10 C there while I was massaging Pablo (crazy for January up here!), and today our high was -8 C. Next week is calling for highs of -21 C. The joys of living in Alberta!

So now I am shooting for the 23rd or the 30th for the boys to go back into conditioning. I have to finish making that rump rug first if it's going to be cold!!

Happy 2012!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday :) I sure did! My husband was home for 2 weeks. It was fantastic! We spent a lot of time with family and friends, and just together. It was perfect.

Do you all have your plans for 2012 set out? I do! I have a lot of goals this year that I hope to reach. I made myself a dream board and I'm very motivated to make everything on it come true! My horsey goals basically include having LJ complete at least one 50 mile endurance ride by the end of the year (and do his first LDR this spring!), and I am really aiming for a year of 100% completions with Player and doing only 50 milers with him. We were SO close last year, until I RO'd out of the last ride.

We've been having a very mild winter this year, and I will admit I LOVE it. It makes me want to move south. We still have snow but far less than usual and our temperatures have been so warm. I usually put Player back into endurance conditioning in February but with the great weather we've been having I am going to start both boys into conditioning next week. The roads are bare right now so I'm not worried about needing corks on them, which is a first for winter time for me. That being said, we still have 3 months of winter left so I better not crow about the warm weather too much. Next week could hit -40 and have 2 ft of snow roll in. Luckily my dad is a farrier, so if that should happen I can get corks and snow ball pads on the boys pretty quick ;)

I've decided this year to log how many miles I put on each horse, training and endurance. Just for fun, just to see. I will share it here!

I think this blog may be moving to WordPress by the end of the month. I am re-vamping my business website there and am going to include the blog with it. So stay tuned for that! 2012 is going to be a very exciting year horse and business wise!