EquiBingo

For the last 4 years my best friend and I have been making our New Year Resolutions in the format of Bingo.

The process is quite exciting – first of all you need to imagine travelling to the future one year ahead. Then imagine yourself being extremely proud of your achievements and feeling happy because the last year was just FANTASTIC!!! (yes, with capital letters and exclamation marks). Logically, the next step is to think what exactly was FANTASTIC!!! Then you start getting ideas of what you want to achieve. For example, you want to lose 20 pounds, save a particular amount of money, travel to Greenland or get over 65% on the Novice dressage test. When you come up with your super-wish-list, you need to word your goals in the present tense. Apparently, this way there is more chance you will achieve them.

If your friends and relatives also have their goals in Bingo format, you can set some rules and play Bingo against (or, better to say, ‘with’) each other. For example, the first one to cross a straight line, or the one with the highest number of goals crossed out, wins a pre-defined prize.

Normally, I have some riding goals on my overall Bingo list, but then I thought “why not make a separate Bingo list for my equestrian dreams?“ And here we are: 49 goals for the next… Let’s say 5 to 7 years. Actually, I already have some squares crossed off, but I’m still way too far away from a single straight line.

And as I hate playing interesting games alone, please feel free to join me. :-) Create your Bingo-list or use mine and start crossing those goals off!

Don’t forget to share how many Bingo points you have, and what your latest achievement was, in the comments section.

Have fun!

Xoxo

P.S. These are my achievements so far:

1. Checked! Rode Mr. Buttons (Irish Draft Horse) during a showjumping clinic run by Karen Whinston in Bahrain in May 2014. Mr. Buttons was later renamed to Professor Buttons as he was a very demanding horse and required everything to be done very precisely.

4. Rode this beauty for the first time in March 2014 in Bahrain. We have been inseparable since. Not surprisingly, although the horse is not mine, our names match just perfectly: Romeo and Yulia.

8. Not sure that it can be counted, but I tried to throw a lasso Altai style in August 2013. Read the full story in November.

14. Did it! I milked a horse at the Engagement of the Stallion Celebration in the middle of Kazakhstan steppe in May 2014.

17. Almost there! So far it’s 22 (in alphabetic order): Bahrain, Belgium, Czech Republic, Egypt, Iceland, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Morocco, Netherlands, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Turkey, UAE, Ukraine, USA.

18. Done in October 2013! See the story about the Laxnes Horse farm and Feikir by the link.

19. Done! My first beach ride happened to be in Casablanca in April 2012.

22. Another great beach ride in Muscat, Oman in May 2012

27. Done! Took a picture with Przwalski’s horse in Real Escuela, Spain in July 2014.

28. Done in August 2014! Read more about riding with Equibeach on the 18^th of October.

29. Learned to ride side-saddle in USA in May 2014. Here is the full story.

32. Took part in a Horse Wedding Celebration in Kazakhstan (May 2014). The full story can be found here.

42. I don’t think I can count it, but my side-saddle horse Grand, back in USA, was a former police horse :-) and here is the picture

47. Watch shrimp fishing on horseback. Done in August 2014. Read the full story in my next post.

48. Watched Real Escuela show in July 2014

Unfortunately, you’re not allowed to take pictures of the show or in the museums, so this picture is not mine