I guess I need new boots

Saturday our barn had its fun show.  I'm both really happy and really disappointed that I didn't enter it.

I'm really happy since Walker was semi-lame earlier this week and I would have risked further lameness if I had shown.  He also got his massage Friday night and wouldn't have been able to be ridden Saturday anyway.  Plus, given his constant stiffness and the fact that we have been working on other things, we weren't 100% ready for this show anyway.

I'm really disappointed because I watched the Western Pleasure Senior class (W/J and W/J/L) and thought, "Damn. I could have done that."  Sometimes those things are a shot in the dark.  Sometimes the class will be filled with seniors who really know their stuff and have horses that really know their stuff and make you and your horse who hasn't worked on his WP in 2 years look like a fool.  And sometimes the class has only a couple participants with horses who are really just bopping along and you think, "Yeah.  Walker could have been a competitor in there even without a ton of preparation."  Saturday was the latter.  Not to say that those people weren't good - just that we wouldn't have made a complete fool of ourselves had we participated.

Live and learn.  If anything, the two shows I have had the opportunity to participate in and have passed on were both shows I should have done in hindsight.  My perfectionist personality has a hard time grasping the concept that we could just do it as a learning  or fun experience.  It's not the Olympics after all.

However, I was at the show all day.  I helped out at the canteen and just chilled out in the sunshine, which looked a lot like this:

Hard at work sitting in the canteen and eating all the homemade cookies

I may also be on the hunt for new cowboy boots.  My barn owner has shamed me into wanting to buy new ones.  Obviously, in a Western barn, cowboy boots are the ultimate expression of fashion, and his exact words were, "God, Natalie, at least you could wear a pair of boots from this century."

Yeah.  That's fair.  I'm pretty sure I actually did get my last boots in the last century.  They're a little old fashioned and a bit rough around the edges, kind of like me.  Naturally, I love them.

So they could use a little TLC...

I'm willing to check out the new styles, even some fun colours, but I'll be damned if I throw out the old ones!  Classic never dies!