Working Student Diaries, part 5

We bring you part four of Jenny’s adventure as a working student and EN guest blogger. Jenny has ambitiously decided to spend the next year as a working student in Lexington, Kentucky. And yes, I promise Jenny explains the picture in the blog. Thanks for writing this Jenny and thank you for reading.

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Link: Hello Eventing Nation!

      I am a huge scatterbrain and went one week longer than usual to write my next post because life has been so incredibly hectic these past three weeks! My last post was right after the eventing at WEG, and every second after I pressed the send button to John has been packed with excitement!

      I’ll start off with a silly story that ended with me sporting the pirate- look for a few days… Since we were going to be at Fair Hill for a whole week, I decided that on my last day off before we left that I would ride Molson so that he wouldn’t get too fat while I was gone. This particular day happened to be rather windy and within .02 seconds of entering the ring, a large sandstorm erupted and decided to invade my eye. Now as a rider I know this happens all the time, and with other things too, like fly spray, horsehair, hay, etc. However, this sand decided to scratch up my cornea so that I couldn’t even open my eye, not even after Andrea and I went inside and tried flushing it out. The next step was to try to get to an eye doctor, however being out of state made it impossible for me to go anywhere except an ER to be covered by my insurance. Thus, the wonderful Andrea drove me to the ER to get looked at, and I came home with lots of goodies, including a sweet eye patch!

      Luckily, my eye healed before we left for Fair Hill, and so the adventure began. The trip up to Maryland went quite smoothly and we arrived only to find out we were encroaching on the largest stinkbug territory known to man.  Now I don’t mean just a few here and there, I mean a full infestation.  When we tried to bring down the blue tarps on the side of the stabling area, it was like Armageddon only with millions of stinkbugs! We had nightly examinations of all of our sleeping bags to make sure we weren’t sharing our sleeping quarters with any unwanted creatures. Fortunately I was able to concentrate on a few other things besides the unusually large population of stink bugs, such as watching some of the best riders in the country compete on some very talented horses. I was in complete awe while watching Clark Montgomery warm up his horses, and I’m still drooling over how quiet his hands are… ah, envy… I also watched in amazement as Megan competed her two polar-opposite upper level horses, making the challenging XC course look easy as pie on both of them! I was also lucky to go on the course walk with Megan and Bonnie Mosser and learned how to attack a 2* course. Needless to say, I learned copious amounts during our week in Maryland, and truly enjoyed every moment of it. All of the volunteers were super nice, and I even made friends with one of the ring stewards during dressage, as Megan spent some extra time in the ring due to her ring blowing away (literally) in the middle of her test! After a great week, our ride home was far from easy. With only a few more hours left to go, the truck decided it was going to break down and we had to pull into a gas station for a few hours until Megan’s father and one of her loyal boarders came out to rescue us! Thank goodness for friends and family at 3am!

      Last week was one giant blur, as my stress level increased tenfold when I came home to a lame horse. With the drought and hard ground, it seems Molson has a big crack in his hind heel, and after calling in a billion favors from our vet and farrier, we made him perfectly comfortable. After a few more days of soaking and packing his foot, he should be just fine! While I would never wish lameness on my horse or any horse for that matter, this does seem to be perfect timing since I am fortunate enough to have developed carpal tunnel syndrome in both of my wrists. The culprit? My loving horse’s large head that I have to hold while riding. The answer? More dressage lessons to make him lighter! (The chiropractor suggested no more riding, I responded with laughter) Megan rode him a few weeks ago and joked that it was her bicep workout to prepare for Fair Hill… however now I am realizing that it is becoming a problem and must work harder to make my horse carry his own darn head!

  I am running out of time and energy now, but I must explain the picture. Basically, I was lucky to catch a ride on one of Megan’s clients’ horses for Midsouth Team Challenge since Moo was out, and went XC in a full lion costume. After the past few weeks, it was exactly what I needed to just have some fun and let loose a little! Personally, I think costumes should be required for XC, it’s way more entertaining!

Until next time…

xo, Jenny

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