Happy Mew Year!

Lucy here. Sorry this is so late, but my hoomin has been purrcrastinating. In her defense, she says her new job has been keeping her very busy lately. The good news (according to her) is that this new job is purrmanent, whatever that means. As long as we still get our cuddle time, I’m good.

Anyway, hope all of you lovely hoomins have been having a meowvelous year so far!

(Yes, that was a lot of cat puns. No, I will not apawlogize.)

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Couelita du Destin

I’ve been putting off writing this for two weeks, but procrastinating isn’t going to make this any easier…

For the past three years I had the privilege to work with a beautiful young Anglo-Arab mare named Couelita du Destin. She was still quite green when I first started riding her and I will never forget the disaster that was our first competition together (her steering still needed work). Building a relationship took time, especially since I initially thought our partnership was going to be temporary: Mountain Blue, the horse I’d been working with previously, had pulled a tendon and was temporarily out of commission, or so we assumed. As it happened, that injury never quite healed properly and she ended up being re-homed after about 6 months. Needless to say, that was a blow. I’d invested three years of hard work and love into that horse and to suddenly have her gone was really hard.

And then two weeks ago I had to deal with it all over again, only worse. I got a call from Fred telling me Couelita had passed away very suddenly from a nasty bout of colic. To say I was devastated would be an understatement. As I said, building a relationship with her took a while, but after three years, we had a pretty solid one and I had come to love her very much. So you can imagine the state I’ve been in the past two weeks. Not a complete wreck, but there have been quite a few tears. I’ve been doing a little better this week, but it’s still hard. It’s going to take a while to fully accept; just how long, I have no idea. For now, I’m taking it one step at a time.

I know that at some point in the relatively near future I’ll find myself a new horsey friend; Couelita, like all the other horses I’ve loved, will always have a special place in my heart, but there’s always room for more.

In the meantime…

Godspeed, sweet girl. I’ll see you on the other side.

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Website Is Up!

After much fiddling around, I finally got my official photography site up and running yesterday. Check it out: www.stephanie-bruce-photo.com

For those of you who don’t read French, my apologies. Hope you enjoy the pictures, at least. 🙂

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Going Pro

Actually, technically, I already have. Gone pro, that is. As of this week, I am officially a professional photographer! I’m still in the process of setting things up and whatnot, but I have my business license, so now when people ask me what I do, I can say, “I’m a photographer.” That still feels a tad surreal. It really took a long time (and several kicks in the pants) for me to finally take the plunge, but I finally did it and here we are. I’ll let y’all know how it goes. And I’ll post a link to my website once I get it up and running (FYI, it’s going to be in French, but it’s also going to be preeeetttty).

So that’s my biggest piece of news. We had a very low-key Christmas this time around, which was just what we all needed, I think. Also, I am officially an adult: I was actually happy to get stuff like slippers and sheets. 😛

That’s about it for now. I have a small backlog of pictures to sort through, so expect to see some fairly soon.

Happy New Year! 🙂

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I Went on Vacation Last Month and Hardly Took Any Pictures

Yes, you read that right. I spent three weeks in the States last month and the camera was largely forgotten during most of that time. To be fair, I was having too much fun with various friends and family members to take very many pictures. Living in the moment and all that (I’m not always good at it, so actually this is a good thing).

I spent most of my visit at BJ’s, getting “kidnapped” by her family almost every day (not that I was complaining) for Starbucks, shopping, and silliness. There is never a dull moment with this crew, let me tell you. 🙂

When I was not out and about, I was making friends with BJ and Mike’s pets, including this very photogenic (and ironically somewhat camera-shy) lady:

Her name is Pooka and yes, she really is as soft and fluffy as she looks.

I also got to spend a few days in Charlottesville with my aunt, uncle, and cousins. Naturally, there were some shenanigans as well:

I even managed to go back to Fredericksburg one Sunday and meet up with some old friends there.

And of course I made sure to indulge my geeky side: I was able to see Black Panther opening weekend (fantastic movie, by the way), plus I picked up a few fun odds and ends like this guy:

Yes, that is an Ant-Man keychain. I couldn’t resist.

So, that’s basically my vacation in a nutshell. There was also the usual trip out to Triple-R where I got to be barn staff again for a day, which was fun.

I’ve been back home again for a month now and not too much has been going on, aside from starting up the job hunting process (yippee). I do have a jumping show coming up on Sunday, though, so at the very least I’ll have some new pictures to share soon.

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January 2018 Show Pics

Last month I participated in my first jumping competition of the year and overall it went pretty well. This was my second official jumping show with Couelita, my new project horse (Blue sadly had to be re-homed due to an injury last year), and while we didn’t place in either of our classes, we didn’t have any major mistakes, so I’m calling it a win. 🙂

The lighting wasn’t great, so I didn’t get very many good shots, but a few turned out nice:

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Birds and a Walk Through the Welsh Countryside

Spotted these guys in Cardiff Bay:

These are from a hike Sandrine and I took in the mountains near her house:

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The Doctor Who Experience, Take 2

Last July, I went to visit Sandrine for a few days, and one of the first things we did was visit the Doctor Who Experience (I was determined to go before it closed two months later). Just like last time, I got very shutter-happy, much to my sister’s amusement.

A few of my favorite shots:

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Happy Mew Year!

Hope 2018 has been meow-velous so far. More to come soon! 🙂

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Meet Meknes!

Mid-May, we had a new addition to the barn family:

Isn’t he cute?

He’s also very friendly and loves being petted:

These are actually from a couple of months ago; he’s gotten bigger and darker since then. He is going to be one handsome boy when he grows up. 🙂

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