The Tale of Two Gingeraffes

What exactly is a gingeraffe?  A gingeraffe is a very tall ginger (me) or a ginger with a very long neck (Stinker Pony).  For the record he isn't actually a pony, he is just shorter than I had intended.

(The picture that convinced me to buy the Stinker Pony)

Neither the stinker nor I have ever actually evented and this is a story of our progression.  To start I will tell you a little bit about me.

I can't remember not riding.  I started out young and when I say young I mean too small to sit on the horse by myself.  My parents would ride with my sister and I in front of them.  Then we graduated to being led around.  Finally this led to me becoming a speed demon on a horse.

(I'm the little one of the left)

I tried showing Western in high school, but mostly Mandy (a superb cattle horse) and I blew around the ring.  Neither of us cared for the dinky jog or lope that is expected.  But I digress.  Starting with college I took a 6-7 year break from horses, it wasn't until I was in grad school that I started riding again.

(One of my earlier lessons)

My goal was to jump, but I was told to start with dressage.  Not surprisingly dressage appealed to my neurotic overachiever personality.  And I was happy being a pretend dressage queen with an amazing trainer D.  Surprise surprise I graduated and had to move in order to have a big kid job (VERY helpful with a horse habit).  This led me to an eventing barn, my current trainer S, and my decision to purchase my first horse (as an adult...as a child I claimed at least 10 head of horses at any one time unless my dad asked about the feed bill).

So how does one go about purchasing a horse when they are fresh out of grad school (aka broke) and only know enough to know that they don't know anything.  Well if you are like me (I am sorry if you are), you decide to contact your old trainer (who is now 14 hours away) and tell her to find you a horse...This is how you end up with a stinker pony.

D did an amazing job and I purchased a green broke (and by green broke I mean he had been sat on) horse sight unseen (a vet check was done I am not quite that crazy).  D rode him for ~90 days and then brought him down.  And in my totally objective opinion he is amazing.

(Our first ride)

 It wasn't without reservations that I went through this process.  There were several times I freaked out and thought I had lost my mind.  I may still think that.  Even though I am good with baby brain, I still don't know what I am doing when it comes to two phases of eventing and the stinker pony knows even less.