Updates from Madison

Hi All,

Life has been crazy the past few days, and is liable to remain so for the next week or more, so I thought I would shoot you a quick update and let you know what's going on in the life of Fran.

Tuesday evening, Farrah arrive at my house to teach private lessons on Wednesday. Her horses stayed at Sherri's. We had a nice low-key evening and hit the hay relatively early. Wednesday morning started at 5:30am, and involved lots of running around setting things up, etc. We got everyone rounded up (including LB's second ride loading up in the back of my car!), the arena set, and all that jazz by 9:00am, and lessons began.

Long story short (I'm going to avoid posting details of people's lessons publicly, if you'd like to hear specifics, please shoot me an email) it was as fantastic day and fun was had by all. Farrah and I ended with an inspirational demo with the 4 of our big horses (LB watched). Crest made an AWESOME cameo, playing double online while I rode Prin bridless. Pictures of all this next week (you'll understand why in a moment)

For the rest of this week and all of next, I'll be traveling with Farrah. We headed out for Madison, WI, on Thursday morning, to spend time at the Midwest Horse Fair, and then teach a clinic next weekend. Our trip down was uneventful, thank goodness. We had a lovely sushi dinner that night, and then hit the hay.

Friday was day 1 of Horse Fair, and Farrah and I both woke up with the beginnings of a cold. Nonetheless, we spent the day handing out flyers, editing website stuff, talking to customers, and promoting Parelli and The Horse First (AWESOME new all-natural boarding facility built by some good friends of ours, check out the link!) After the fair was done for the day, we went out riding and we had a FANTASTIC ride. I rode Prin, of course, and Farrah rode Wesley and turned Caesar loose. We rode like crazy people for an hour and a half, trotting, cantering, galloping (I haven't done that in a year at least!!!!) and just generally enjoying the gorgeous evening. I think the particular highlight was Caesar, overall. He's not a very naturally round horse, and Farrah's poured a lot of energy into getting him to look good and carry himself better, and BOY did that show! He looked FANTASTIC! He and Prin were having "extended-trotathons", and he honestly looked like he'd blow them away in the high-level dressage arena. Awesome.

Saturday, I was super super sick. I could hardly breath, let alone do anything productive. I kind of stuck to myself for most of the day, did some website editing for Farrah, and then moseyed around watching presentations for the rest of the day. We hit "The Old-Fashioned", a restaurant owned by another friend of ours, for dinner, and then headed home and after doing chores, crashed (almost literally!) for the night.

Today is the last day of horse fair. After this is finished, Farrah and I plan to go for a ride and do some playing. This week is going to be fun, Farrah will be teaching private lessons on Thursday and Friday, and then a clinic on Saturday and Sunday, and I'll head home Sunday night.

Somewhere in there, we plan to film all the L3 auditions for Prin and me, and see if we can attempt some Level 4 stuff (we'll see how that goes, I think I may be able to do online and freestyle, but like I said, we'll see). I'll get those videos up ASAP. So anyway, just keeping busy for now. I'm going to finish up editing Farrah's calendar, and then head out to lunch with a Parelli friend of mine.

So, I'll try to keep updated, but if I don't, it's only because life is crazy good :)

Savvy on!

Fran