Hello new members

I probably won't have much time to really be on here but if you're starting a forum. I thought I should be supportive.

Alright to start, my name is Cassandra and I am a dressage rider. I used to event on a horse named Kahlua. Kahlua was put down in 2012, I did not own him at the time but he had a bad colic episode.

I used to work as a working student so I rode about 13 different horses over the course of about a week or so for nearly 2 years. And then off and on for the past 2 years I've had a rotation of about 2-4 different horses to ride with an array of different personalities. Not too long ago I was riding a very green, kind of hot, nervous horse who had had a lot of bad training and was working on just laying a path for him, so life could be easy. He was very smart and was doing quite well before he left, I could put both reins in one hand and move up or down into a transition and he'd stay connected but then I'd have to get to riding him again. As is the way with green horses, give them a direction, help them where you can and leave them alone.

I also have done quite a bit of rehab on different horses and then my main horsey buddy is Sporty who is very quirky. But as quirky as he is, I also love him very, very much. He and I make a good team and every mountain we climb I'm very proud of. I'm very proud of our one handed transitions when he's submissive and cooperative enough to do them and I'm focussed enough to ride the rest of him. I'm proud because it takes everything I have to ride that horse. My focus, my strength, my quickness in the application of the aids, and assertiveness and correctness. But I'm proud to his partner and that we work well together.

I've also ridden in a lot of clinics and I ride a different horse in just about everyone. I'm that person where people are like you wanna ride? And I'm like sure, the horse available I've never ridden before but hell we'll have a good ride. I've done that a few times and had great rides.

Awesome! It's nice to see you back And I know what you mean, I stopped visiting forums because of so much going on in life.

But now I don't really have much of a social life anymore, so I tend to stay in now, and that's why I have a bit of free time on my hands to try and re-create what we used to have!

But I hope to see you around here more soon!

Its good to get these updates on everyone, so glad to hear about everyone!

Good to hear all is well Cassandra, I want to again express my condolences toward Kahlua. But it sounds like you are enjoying your time with some new horses as well and I wish you the best!

YAY, CASSANDRA! hahaha
I'm glad everyone is keeping the same names, it makes it feel like we're just going back to normal!

You know I was a bit upset about Kahlua but it was hard to be too upset because he really had a good life. He was with a young rider who was going to be eventing him novice (I think) and he really had a good life, he was jumping and going cross country which he loved and he was not in terrible pain when he coliced. They said he just went to lay down, no thrashing, no obvious dangerous signs so they thought he might have just had gas but then when they went to take him to university they found too much tissue had died to make him a candidate for surgery.

I've had a lot of horses to ride since him, I can think of 20 off the top of my head. I don't especially want to count but there have been a lot. The only ones I've really connected with have been Bailey, Ivan, Clyde, Leo and Sporty but Sporty is in a league of his own, I love that horse more than I've ever loved any horse. With Bailey being a close second.

It made me really sad to hear about Kahlua He was one of my favourite horses to hear about on the forum.
But it's good that you're still enjoying riding and getting on to new horses as well.