Organizing machine...

If only I could be talking about my house...

But no, I am referring to my new hobby of organizing events out at Five County Stables!

Five County is a wonderful facility that I began teaching at last Spring.  With a wide variety of boarders and wonderful amenities, it's a really cool place to be around.  The owner, Greg Hartrich, is a trail rider at heart, with a wonderful desire to provide a place for people to enjoy their horses, no matter what the discipline.

The events held at Five County had been previously organized by another professional, and when that relationship ended (between her and the barn), the events were at risk of being lost.  I offered to help out, and thus we scheduled at Combined Test and a Hunter Pace for this Fall.

The Combined Test was held on Halloween, and we had participants in Green-As-Grass, Maiden and Beginner Novice levels in addition to straight dressage tests.  Although the turnout was small, we had a great time with beautiful weather.

Sarah and Cocoa both look good in blue!  Shartra Sylivant Photo

 In addition to organizing, there were also C-Horse Event Team members competing and volunteering - what a family event!  Shartra Sylivant and Draco won the Low Score Award, and Sarah Edwards with Cocoa won the Green-as-Grass division.  Kim G. placed second to Sarah in her first competition after a "hiatus" -- Happy Birthday Kim!!!!

Shartra and Draco on their way to receiving the Low Score Award.  Jim Sylivant Photo

Two weeks later, we hosted the Hunter Pace, and the turnout was quite different then the CT... we had over 100 horses competing!!!!  If you would have told me how time consuming it would be to set up for a Hunter Pace, I would have told you that you were crazy.  But alas, Greg and I got it set up, and got all the chili cooked (for the free chili lunch).  Everyone had safe rides, and once again we were blessed with absolutely amazing weather.  It was a pleasure to see people of all disciplines enjoying their horses.

Now I'm back to 'regular' living, teaching and riding and still reeling a bit from the rush that was the Hunter Pace.  Next week I head to Illinois for family Thanksgiving... can't wait to see my 'Rockstar' (Rockie) and the rest of the ponies (and eat a lot of stuffing!!!!!)

And in the left corner, we have ROYAL CHAMPION!

One of the awesome things about being involved with the growing business that is C-Horse Eventing, is the great group of products that I get the pleasure of using in my everyday program, and get to promote as sponsors of C-Horse!  The newest one of these companies is Royal Champion Supplements.

A few months ago, my friend Risa Flamm contacted me to see if I'd be interested in giving Royal Champion Supplements a try in Prophet's program.  Now, I'm particular when it comes to my horse, and I want to be sure that he's getting everything he possibly can to perform at optimal levels, so I did a bit of research and gave the sample bag a try.

I do also like to think that I supplement my horse adequately, but not OVER supplement.  I'd like to have more then just very expensive fertilizer when all is said and done.  What I like about the Premium Plus product is that it provides vitamin and mineral support for all the systems of the horse, in a lovely all-around additive, and leave P looking and feeling great!

If you're interested in including Royal Champion in your program, feel free to use coupon code "Cassidy10" and receive 10% off your order!

See P and I's introduction on their blog here.

The 100 year drought....

Right now I feel like the world's worst blogger.  Nearly a month and no actual updates?  How does that happen?!

I'll tell you how that happens... stress/confusion/frustration/lack-of-sleep

Basically for the last year or so I've been running around like a headless chicken, scaring small children and making in-audible screeching noises (ok, maybe not the last two things).  Now, I LOVE being busy, and working hard for a goal, however I was losing more and more time with the two things I love most in this world - J-Bomb and P-Diddy.

I've been very lucky that P is as good as he is, and was able to rock his move up to Preliminary, qualifying for a CIC*, all the while, improving in a program that consisted of scattered jump schools and midnight trot sets/dressage schools.... what a good boy.

J-bomb became resigned to the fact that his fiancé may not clean, cook, or ever be home, yet he would call during the day to make sure I was ok and we'd talk and fill eachother in on what's going on, since the only times we'd see eachother face to face, one of us was usually asleep.

Recently I've become quite busy with the horse stuff, with more training horses and more lesson clients.  I even took up a new 'organizing' hobby, tackling a Combined Test (which happened last weekend) and a Hunter Pace (coming up next weekend).  I've also picked up some more freelance marketing/design/website business.  I love the direction all my personal business is going, however, I was still running out of hours in the day and most of my hours were being spent at ThinLine, doing things that weren't being productive towards my personal goals.

Do you know how hard it is to try and quit a job, especially in this economy?  It's kind of like jumping off a cliff, into the deep end, in the dark, without telling anyone where you're going (hence the "how to fall" post from last week -- that was the day of the quitting). For the last year, I've been pondering this move, telling myself that the time would come.  Well, in the last week, two things happened which made me realize it was time...

First off, I took P down to Aiken for the Paradise Horse Trials. I won't go into crazy amounts of details, but the whole trip was a bust, from a crazy bit check person on a power-trip, to retiring on XC (and not realizing they marked me as an E until way later).  P did jump one of only two double clears in SJ, and will live to fight another day (another day that I've actually prepared appropriately for!).

P had done the CT at Fenridge the weekend before, winning easily, and although that was the only jumping we'd done since AECs, I felt semi-prepared for Paradise, which wasn't good enough, since neither P nor I were seeing our spots very well. Lesson learned.  P's fine, I'm fine, now we school for the winter, and come out in February ready to fight hard!!!!!

The second thing that made me realize that it was time was the fact that when J-bomb and I did get to see eachother, it usually involved me having a minor mental meltdown about something stupid.  John finally asked me if he could schedule some "non-crazy-Cassidy-time", and told me to write it in my calendar.  I think that's a sign that things need to be better, eh?

So I went and gave my notice last week, and luckily (for my bank account), ThinLine is going to let me continue on at 2 days a week and I can spend the rest of the time growing my business!  It's a huge relief... one that hasn't really hit me yet, I think.  I did get to clean out my fridge yesterday morning (and in the process, I became painfully aware of just how long it had been since I'd done housework), and have a pretty loaded schedule still, but I'm thinking I'll be having way less meltdowns on John.

Prophet has a dressage show this weekend with a light XC school. We then will have a dressage lesson next week, and continue chipping away at our dressage and show jumping throughout the winter.

I do have some very exciting news about new sponsors and more updates, but it just took me a while to work up the courage to announce that "I quit!" so those posts will be coming soon!

Here's to hoping that the riding/marketing/teaching/etc... business that is C-Horse keeps growing and growing... Ciao, ciao!