Goals for The Year

So... I've decided that I have a few goals for the coming year.  Typically, i mark my years in the showing part of the hobby by Red River Live, since that was my first show, but Carmen's not having it this year due to personal circumtances.  Still, its hard to believe that as of September I'll have been in the showing part of the hobby for 5 years.  In that time i've managed to do a lot of stuff!  I've won tons of NAN cards, I've won 4 Overall show Champs or Reserves, I got attended NAN in 2007 (my FOURTH Show ever) and won 5 Top 10's and a National Championship, and i've started customizing my own horses.  I've been successful in english and western performance in one of the top performance regions of the country; I've made lots of new friends, even started judging!

So my goals for this year are:

• NAN Top 10 For Atari
• NAN Top 10 or Cookie for Logan in X country and/or showjumping and/or Hunter (this depends on if all the jumping classes are on the table at the same time.  I think they usually are, so we might have to choose.)
• NAN Top 10 or Cookie for Mahoney in any of his OF English Events.  I think his best chances are in Dressage, Hunter, and Sport Type Pleasure, but I'm going to put him in as many English classes as i can at NAN this year.
• NAN Top 10's for halter horses (depends on who goes, but hopefully I'l do as well or better than I did last time i went!)
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• Finish my new Foxhunting/Natural Trail diorama with Livvy's help (conscript Lindsay if necessary for artistic input)
• Finish my Arena Wall for Western Events
• Make documentation for Western and Games Entries
• Plan setups for Stock Work (get a cow), Reining/Reined Cow Horse, Ranch Horse Trail, etc. for Dun It To Heck
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• Get all horses photographed for my SD list
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• Keep the MHV updated
• Finish Hanoverian Articles
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• Judge MEPSA OF Halter Photoshow Championship in a timely manner(!)

*WHEW*

So those are a lot of goals.   I think the hardest to finish is going to be my Dioramas and the setups for the western events since I don't have real life experience in those.  But i'll do some research, run some things by some of those new friends, and hope for the best!

The NAN Stuff is out of my hands really.  I mean, it all depends on what the three judges like best that day, and if it's not Atari, or Logan, or Mahoney (or any of my other performance horses) well, that's okay.  This NAN, while i do have lofty goals, is basically my reward for finishing my undergraduate studies.  I don't know how much I'll be able to show as a grad student -- I know i'll get to a few, but i'm almost sure i won't see another NAN until maybe the summer after my Master's.  That is, unless we have it in texas again!  Then I'll get there!

I also need to trim my showstring.  I'm starting to really focus more on performance and artist resins, and both of those get really expensive really fast.  I try not to buy resins I can't show in performance, so that does help, but there are so many nice OFs on my want list... And i've fallen into the Stone boat.  Though not in a big way.  I own 5, and one of those is a mini resin.  I need to figure out where my focus is going to be and trim the showstring accordingly.  I DID trim it quite a bit when i switched to trunks instead of using my giant rubbermaid, and that has helped, but I need to really go through with a fine toothed comb and decide who will show consistently and who will show at certain shows or not at all.  That's another thing to add to the summer to do list.

I'm pretty optimistic though.  After NAN the next show in Texas isn't till January, and the next show in Oklahoma isn't till November.  It'll be my first semester of grad school, so I'm not going to make any concrete plans yet, but if i am in desperate need of a show, we'll see who's going up to OK.  If not, I'll wait till January and go to Midwinter's!

And that's that for now.