The Tenth Month

 October was super busy in all the best ways and I still have several posts to go before I'm caught up, but in the meantime, here is my monthly photo purge.

October is my favorite and Mike and I got some great hiking in.

Booger's First Hunter Pace

 My new year's resolution was to ride Booger as often as I ride Lucy. My only goal for her this year was trailer her off the property to ride. We accomplished that in July when I took her to the Sourland Preserve with Eryca. My secret reach goal was to take her to a hunter pace this fall. I had planned to take her to the fall pace right here in the Valley. Their events tend to be on the short side and very quiet. It's not unusual for us not to see horses on trail at all. Plus it would be a short trailer ride. I am probably guilty of babying Booger a little bit, but I'd rather go slow and have her stay sane and happy than skip a step and have a hot mess on my hands. 

The AVTA pace was supposed to be the first weekend of October. Eryca and I planned to go together. My plan was to take Booger and go nice and slow. As usual, the universe heard me following a plan and promptly ruined it. After one of the driest summers in memory, the skies opened up for several days and the pace got rescheduled. I was so disappointed.

The following weekend was the Monmouth County pace at my old stomping grounds, the Assunpink. This pace has been on my to-do list for several years now, but we never seem to make it down there. Unlike the AVTA pace, the course is a little longer, there tends to be a large turn out, and the drive is about an hour on the highway. Originally, I planned to go with Lucy and Eryca. Unfortunately, Eryca was not available that weekend. 

As I was pouting, Mike suggested, "Why don't you call Tor and see if she's available?" The two of them enable me.

So I called Tor, who was in fact available, and told her I had a little brainstorm going on. "Feel free to say no to this. I understand if your idea of a good time doesn't include babysitting me, but we have two options. We can take Lucy and Lilly or you can ride Lucy and I can take Booger to her first hunter pace. I might die but..."
"You already know which option I'm going to pick..."

Merrill Creek

 It's October, which means Mike and I have started hiking again. As always, I take way too many photos. We're about to run out the door to go hiking again so I'm mostly just going to dump photos and skedaddle. Earlier this month, we headed up to Merrill Creek Reservoir. Regular readers know that this is one of our favorite places and that we go there all the time. This time around was as lovely as ever. We decided to park at the bird watching area on the dam, then head along the Deadwoods. From there, we decided to detour from our usual route and explore the blue and yellow trails. I don't think we've been in that particular section of the park since the first time we went! It was beautiful and peaceful and a lovely way to spend a fall afternoon. 

Dawn and Dean Come to Visit

 One month ago, Dawn and Dean came to visit for a Saturday of riding. Long story short, Dean hadn't been on a horse in about eighteen months and was long overdue for a trail ride. It is so nice to be in a position where I have horses I can share with my friends. I only got anywhere in the horse world due to the generosity of other people over the years, and it feels nice to give back, even in such a small way.

That day, we ended up having a lovely eleven mile jaunt through the valley.

Dawn on Booger and Dean on Lilly.

Pace with a View

 We have been super busy around here and I feel  like I am never going to catch up on blogging. I also feel like I've been saying that for years, so I should probably just let it go unsaid. 

Almost a month ago (!) Eryca and I took Lucy and Lilly to the Tewksbury Trail Association "pace with a view". The pace lived up to its name and was the most scenic pace I've done to date.

Photo taken by a lovely volunteer at the halfway point.

The Ninth Month

 I was planning to take Booger to her first hunter pace today, so of course it's been pouring down rain for 48 hours straight. I guess I'll take this opportunity to do September's photo dump.

Jess took this awesome photo one evening when she, Tara, and I rode together. 

In which we call the Rescue Wagon

 As I mentioned in my August review, I came off of Lucy for the first time last month. The last time I came off a horse was four years ago when I rode racehorses. That time, we were galloping down hill when Percy bucked, reared, and then forgot to put his landing gear back down. He fell flat on his face and when he got up, I was no longer on him. I guess I was due.

As a bit of background for this post, the vineyard across the street has been having a hard time this year. The drought was bad enough and they have had the fire department watering the vines throughout the summer. The drought hit with a double whammy, however. With the dry conditions and lack of vegetation as a result, the birds have been extra bad this year and have been decimating the grapes. 

The vineyard always uses netting on the plants, and last year they installed a speaker system that would make angry hawk noises on a timer. I guess those were not enough, however, and the vineyard hired a third party to ward off the avians this year. It started with the addition of firecracker noises to the security recording. That was mildly annoying, but the horses got used to it after a few days. That still wasn't enough, apparently, and the third party company set up an air canon that went off every minute, all day, every day. 

Now, I am not complaining, per se. The vineyard has a right to farm, and I understand the struggle of a small business during hard times. I do, however, think that the non-stop nature of the air canon wore on the horses a bit. Lucy in particular seemed rattled by it, which surprised me since she's normally my steady eddy. For a little while there, I was worried she'd end up with ulcer before the harvest. Now, Lucy was a field trial horse back in Texas, and has no problem with regular gun shots. In fact, none of the horses seem to mind shotgun season at all. I just think it was the relentless quality of the air canon that got to her. (To my surprise, Booger didn't seem to care at all). 

So for about three weeks in August*, Lucy started each ride a little bit twitchy. She would flinch at things like birds in the grass and squirrels in the trees. Things that would normally get a mild response out of her were now causing her to tuck her butt and scoot forward, which is totally out of character for her. We even cut one ride short because she was being completely unmanageable and I had to use Lilly as a wall to keep her from leaping sideways at absolutely nothing. For the most part, however, she would gradually relax once we got out of earshot of the canon. Despite her flightiness, we had some lovely rides in August. 

*My dad always says "nothing is forever" and I just kept reminding myself that the canon is temporary. In fact, the canon seems to have stopped for the most part, and the vineyard is now flying bird-shaped kites and hanging hazmat suit-wearing scarecrows, much to my amusement. Lucy is back to her usual reliable self now, and seems no worse for the wear. 

So on one overcast Sunday, Eryca and I tacked up with the goal of doing a ride to the other side of the valley. There we would find peace and quiet and a change of scenery.

Hiking: Plainsboro Preserve

 It is finally raining, which means I have time to sit down and catch up on computer-related stuff for fun. I appreciate everyone who has reached out, both about the anonymous asshole and the state of the blog. I want to be clear that I am not quitting blogging. I am just restructuring the role it plays in my life. 

Anyway!

A few weeks ago, the temperatures broke enough for Mike and me to go hiking for the first time in ages. Neither one of us was feeling particularly inspired as far as trip-planning goes, so I decided to check a more local spot off our list. 

I discovered the NJ Audubon Plainsboro Preserve while driving to Cara's new barn when I was still teaching. It looked interesting online and I added it to my list of places to explore "some time". They don't allow dogs in the preserve so the dude stayed home in the AC. 

We stopped for lunch at Panera on the way and set out to explore the park with no particular plan in mind. 

It was beautiful!

Much of the trail centered around the 50 acre McCormack Lake.

 So I initially was going to just lock the blog down and be done with it, but fuck this person. They don't know me. I'm just going to post this anonymous comment here so the public can have their final say. Then I guess I will take my happy, wagging dog out back and shoot him since he's suffering. I do actually have a response to the rest of this, but if you're not brave enough to post your identity, I don't give a fuck. I may not be perfect. Maybe I'm even a hypocrite. But I've never been too ashamed to put my name behind my opinions. As Donald Trump would say, "If you don't like it, leave." PS- if you think 'woke' is an insult, I'm not your target audience. Fuck you, Karen.

PS- you can email me at dominika.nawrot@gmail.com if yo don't like that you can't comment anonymously any more you piece of shit.  

The Eighth Month

 August was honestly awful. You may have gathered that from my lack of posts.

And while we're on that subject... I really don't know how much longer I'll continue blogging. The passion has gone out of it for me for sure. I don't think I'll ever completely abandon this space, but its purpose in my life has definitely shifted. Mostly I keep the blog because it's easier to search than other social media when it comes to digging up specific photos. 

The heyday of horse blogging has definitely come and gone. So many of my favorite blogs have gone the way of the Dodo and Blogger makes it nearly impossible to follow and comment on blogs without logging onto a physical computer. 

While I'm generally quite content with my life these days, I am not doing much that warrants writing about. I am not horse training. I am not currently endurance riding. I am making plenty of new memories and riding my own horses almost daily, but those things are more easily documented on Facebook and Instagram (where I can also monitor the audience). I enjoy putting together my monthly recaps so I can review the year when December rolls around, but I recognize that photo dumps are probably not the content people signed up for. 

I don't really know what the point of all this rambling is other than to say that this space, beloved as it is, is no longer the priority it used to be. 

But back to the eighth and longest month...

Here are a few things that sucked about August:

• After three years of dodging it, I finally caught COVID.
• I had an emergency root canal which turned into a four part series and cost me $3000. Have I mentioned I am terrified of the dentist?
• Gunner tried to kill himself. He's ok now, but it was touch and go for a minute. Also, formal warning: this post contains graphic photos.
• Julio had blow out diarrhea in the Rav on the way to work one morning. 
• We took Julio for his follow up oncology visit (all good news... his scans and bloodwork look good). I thought it was going to be $800 and our last visit for six months or so. Instead we got "that'll be $2600 and we'll see you in eight weeks". He's worth every penny but everything else is on hold indefinitely.
• Without going into too much detail, work is very stressful right now. Our system is still not up and running 100%. This means we can only work from the office, so my remote position has turned into an office job. All of that would be fine, but the NJ office is shutting down in three weeks and we have no idea if we'll be able to work from home by then. 
• Between work and everything else, I have not been riding much.
• I had my first fall off of Lucy when she came crashing down on top of me in a dried up creek bed four miles from home. We are both ok, but that put a kink in our riding as well. I'll probably make a separate post on that as well. 

It wasn't all bad, however, and I took as many photos as ever despite the interruptions to my routine. 

The days are getting shorter. While I'm sad to lose the daylight, I do quite enjoy golden hour rides. Plus the bombers are starting to die off, and it actually gets cool in the evenings. Here's Booger during a sunset ride last week.