December 1, 2021 Everyone survived 'No Stirrup November'. Now, it's time for Christmas hats for both horses and riders! Exciting! Ben was our first student to model the Christmas hat, and Buster was our first horse to model his hat. Winnie came in a close second with modeling the hat. It's also sunny and warm, like 70 degrees. It's going to be a great December!
November 1, 2021 It's one of my favorite months, because this is my Birthday month! And.......because in the horse world, it is NO Stirrup November! YAY! Everyone gets to work on their leg muscles. :-)
I hope it was a good Halloween for all of you. Thunder & Buster had their photos taken wearing their unicorn horns to celebrate the day. Now, Thanksgiving is on the way, along with more cool weather. I saw that in just a dew nights we are dropping to 35 degrees, and then 32. YIKES! It's also time for our crazy daylight savings and the darkness rolling in around 5:00 p.m. Not my favorite!
I hope it was a good Halloween for all of you. Thunder & Buster had their photos taken wearing their unicorn horns to celebrate the day. Now, Thanksgiving is on the way, along with more cool weather. I saw that in just a dew nights we are dropping to 35 degrees, and then 32. YIKES! It's also time for our crazy daylight savings and the darkness rolling in around 5:00 p.m. Not my favorite!
October 6, 2021 Happy soon to be Halloween! I feel like we have decorated around here with all these Joro spiders making thousands of webs everywhere. Such big, strong, webs too! On the horse front, all is good. I posted pictures on my personal FaceBook page of the lessons for last week, be sure to check them out. Everyone looks as awesome as ever. :-) Day before yesterday, Wendy gave me the idea that she was getting lonely and that she could handle being turned out with the 3 geldings. I guess she was correct, because it's going really well. Even though I don't like putting the mares and geldings together, and I never thought Ben or Thunder would cooperate with the idea.......it's gone really nicely the past 2 nights. Fingers crossed that it continues! And.......I've become a horse show mom! It's a little different not being the usual horse show coach/ trainer, but the new role of horse show mom is pretty great. Winnie has started showing IEA dressage on a high school team out of Dahlonega.
September 15, 2021 Somehow 2 months slipped by without an update. OOPS! I thought I had broken that habit and was on a good streak. I guess barn life just keeps me busy and away from the computer. The nice thing is, normally no news is good news, and that holds true. Everything has been normal at the farm these past 2 months, and that means things are going great.
July 8, 2021 Hi! Things are awesome around here, no complaints. I hope all of you are having an enjoyable summer. Since I last posted, Ben had a nice 29th birthday, we celebrated Father's day, Hunter celebrated his birthday, We went and watched the big Quarter Horse show twice, Bobby celebrated his birthday, and the 4th of July holiday happened. Other than that we've just been hanging out at the barn. Everything is wonderful here.
June 14, 2021 HAPPy BIRTHDAY to THUNDER who turns 13 today. You are a teenager! Also, an early birthday shoutout to Ben, who celebrates his 29th birthday tomorrow. I also want to send a shout-out to my student Ben, because he informed me that he reads these updates. I am thrilled that people are enjoying the website! I was thinking it might only be Winnie and I, that check it out.
In other news, I'm updating some of the other horse information today. I was going through some files and realized that horse Ben partnered up with us in the summer of 2004, when he was 12 years old. This means he has been a part of Making Strides Equestrian for 17 years. I found in the files that Fly joined us in the spring of 2000 when he was 13, and probably stayed 2-3 years before he was outgrown. He returned to us in the fall of 2006 when he was 19. He's been a team member for the past 15 years and an extra 2-3 years before that.
In other news, I'm updating some of the other horse information today. I was going through some files and realized that horse Ben partnered up with us in the summer of 2004, when he was 12 years old. This means he has been a part of Making Strides Equestrian for 17 years. I found in the files that Fly joined us in the spring of 2000 when he was 13, and probably stayed 2-3 years before he was outgrown. He returned to us in the fall of 2006 when he was 19. He's been a team member for the past 15 years and an extra 2-3 years before that.
June 8, 2021 Hello! Things are going great here at Making Strides Equestrian. It's been a good month so far. Looks like I didn't mention birthdays in the previous post, so Happy Birthday goes out to Wendy for turning 27. Looks like we have a quite a few birthdays to mention this month, so I'll wait on the next post for all of them.
May 23, 2021 It is heating up this week in Athens! Tuesday is going to be around 97. That's HOT for May. All week will be in the 90's. Hello Summer! The heat makes it feel like summertime, as well as all the schools ending. One student has already left to work in Hawaii for the summer, while another leaves us in July to move to Ohio. Another student picked up a summer job in the north Ga mountains. As much as I love summer, I hate not seeing my students as much. Other than that though, I love summer!
May 6, 2021 Hello! I guess I waited a little while to jump back on the website after my last post in late March. Luckily, things at home returned to normal after a couple of weeks and lessons started back up. Spencer & Batman are still on our minds everyday but the other horses' needed our love & support and we had to get back to riding. Buster & Thunder have been on 2 off-property trail rides since the last post, and are getting better & better each time. School is almost out for everyone for summer break, the days are getting sunny and warm, and the rain is keeping the green grass growing. I put Ben on the lunge line for fun last week, and even barefoot he still has his floaty trot. Wendy & Fly are awesome, Fly just celebrated his 34th birthday. Thunder has now been a part of our team for 4 years. Hopefully I'll stay on top of updates as well.
March 28, 2021 I had planned on editing this site a few different times this month, but it never happened. Now today, I must edit because of a tragedy. NOT what I wanted to do, ever. Everyone understands that lightning storms are unpredictable, scary, and not good in the horse world. On the morning of Friday, March 26, the lightning storm claimed 2 of our special equine family members. Our hearts are broken and empty, yet we are trying to mend the hole by filling our hearts back up with unending memories.This hit us really hard, but we can be thankful in all that they gave to us.
MARCH 1, 2021 We've made it to one of my favorite months! March is always special to me because Magnum was born on March 7 and decades later Winnie was born on March 10th. In-between those years, Westley was born on March 21. I also love March because it makes me think Spring has arrived. Yesterdays 78 degree weather did not disappoint!
Two days ago we added another equine family member to our team, named Buster. Buster has been added to the 'Horses and Ponies page', so be sure to check him out. Once my computer uploads my recent photos, I'll add his picture.
Two days ago we added another equine family member to our team, named Buster. Buster has been added to the 'Horses and Ponies page', so be sure to check him out. Once my computer uploads my recent photos, I'll add his picture.
Feb 7, 2021 Welcome to February. February is a bit difficult to schedule all the riding we'd like to do. Some mornings the ground is frozen, some days are rainy, some days the ground is just too saturated, and other days its a sunny 58 degrees. We did finally, finally, finally travel off property and take Thunder & Batman to an outing for trail riding at a state park. A big thank you to both Samantha & Haley for being our test riders. And thanks to Tommy for being our driver. Can't wait for more fun outings! ALSO, since we couldn't ride everyday, I scheduled the dentist to come out and work on our horses' teeth. Everyone had a great check-up.
Jan 1, 2021 HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Jan 26, 2021 Just sending out a HELLO to all of the website visitors.