Happy New Year!

Wow, another year has come to a close. What a year! I had a baby, took 7 months off riding, passed another 3 law units (not long to go now!), started my little boy at Montessori school 5 mornings a week, started back at work after a year off doing a PhD, went on mat leave (they must seriously love me at work!), got my filly in foal, resigned from a board, became acting Chair of another (how does that even happen!!), finally got my dressage judge accreditation, planned a wedding (well, still planning....sigh), paid off my credit card (hooray!).....and that's just what I can think of right now. It's been a hard year for most of us, full of trepidation and uncertainty, disappointment and resilience. Here's to a new year of promise, achievement, positive change and reward for hard work!

My new eventing buddy and I sat down yesterday over a very noice brunch and planned out the first 6 months of next year in our quest for 1* domination. She, it was decided, will go to every bloody event in a 4 hour radius. I, however, can only go to events where I don't have to camp due to baby restrictions. She will assist at said events by holding the baby while I ride - leaving my very understanding husband-to-be at home with our young man. Sounds easy, right?

So, I think we'll be doing:

• Berrima in March, Intro
• Albury in April, possibly our first Prelim if all goes well at Berrima
• Wagga in May, Prelim
• Canberra the weekend after, Prelim
• Berrima again mid-June, Prelim.

Looks good on paper (e-paper?) but I'm confident we can get up to Prelim by June. And all but Canberra are pretty easy-going courses so Assegai should get lots of confidence if I don't screw it up. :)

Hopefully, I'll see some of you there. Thanks so much for reading my blog! It's been amazing how many people have actually read past the first post. I promise it'll get way more interesting once we actually start competing.

For those of you on holidays and in need of some holiday reading, or for those of you hardcore enough to do it at work,  here are some really interesting articles from one of my favourite online mags, The Horse.com:

http://www.thehorse.com/articles/29430/conditioning-young-horses
http://www.thehorse.com/articles/30795/equine-performance-and-psychological-factors-linked
http://www.thehorse.com/articles/30905/creating-a-sustainable-equine-athlete
http://www.thehorse.com/articles/30951/human-barefoot-trends-what-can-they-tell-us-about-horses
http://www.thehorse.com/articles/31056/look-ma-no-shoes

You may need to sign up/register as a member for The Horse - it takes but a minute and the site is a goldmine. Interesting with the last two how, despite the research showing the benefits of barefoot, the disbelief of the researcher seems to downplay those benefits and they recommend barefoot only for horses with no imbalance or pre-existing conditions (there is no such horse!).

Happy New Year! Hope yours is way more debaucherous than mine!