No more lessons

So I decided to fire my trainer. She's been consistently getting lazier. Like, I say "I want to do more jumping in my lessons" and she proceeds to sit on the mounting block eating her trail mix while I jump the half fallen jumps that were already set up in the arena instead of rearranging them into a specific exercise for us. I also decided that with my paychecks being smaller, I really couldn't afford to be taking lessons unless I felt like I was getting a lot out of them, which I didn't really anymore. She also was seeming to push the spurs/whip thing a lot with me. I don't like riding with spurs or a whip, I would rather rely on other things. I know sometimes they are necessary, but I'd rather try to work around them. Especially when my horse seems to lose her mind when I use a whip on her. She doesn't take punishment very well... better than she used to, but still it can turn her into a crazy horse for a bit if she doesn't understand. When I tried to use my whip on her in my last lesson she just seemed like she didn't get where it came from or why, and ran around in fear for 5 minutes.

Anyhow, long whip/spurs rant over... it rained pretty good over this weekend, so there hasn't been a whole lot of riding going on. I have started to give Bijou two buckets a day now, as her once a day meal of beet pulp and rice bran was exceeding the buckets limit. I also added alfalfa pellets and soybean oil in. So far she seems to like the taste of her feed better with the alfalfa, and the oil hasn't caused any runs yet, and I've already bumped up to 1/2 c. 2x per day. I had the urge to pull out my old Equine Nutrition text books, but then realized that I would probably get bogged down in them and trying to balance a ration. I'd rather spend my days feeding my horse something I know works than in the books trying to make it perfect.

I also put up an ad a while back on Craigslist to see if anyone would want to come out and ride the beast. I don't think I'll charge anything because she's not a schoolmaster who could teach someone a lot, and I'd really appreciate just having someone come out to help me get her out more. So far I have two candidates, after next week I'll have had both of them out so we'll see how that goes.