Where the Heck did the Year Go??

Wow, I can't believe it has been nearly a year since I posted anything! Clearly I am not addicted to blogging. It's probably also due to the fact that I don't have a computer at home and I don't want to blog during actual work time--that's a serious no-no!

I'll give you the reader's digest version of what's been going on at the barn. Shiloh and I have been working with a new trainer, and things are going well. She really understands both me and my horse, and that makes lessons much more productive.

There's a lot of drama at the barn, as always. You cannot believe the swirling hoo-hah that goes on in a barn! We have the Dressage Queen, who isn't really a great rider herself but she has a lot of money and was able to buy an already trained horse (the horse knows more than she does, to be honest) and she feels that she should be able to do what she wants to do when she wants to do it, regardless of how that impacts everyone else. If she wants to hose her horse, then you had better get out of the wash stall RIGHT NOW! Then there's the woman who owns an agressive mare that kicked another horse and caused quite a bit of damage. That can happen, and it's not the owner's fault, but she denies that her mare could possibly have done this because "she just so sweet." Yeah, right... There's the trainer who doesn't show up to teach her lessons and somehow it's always the student's fault--"didn't you get a message? No? Well I left one at 555-5555. How can that not be your number? That's the number you gave me, see, here it is!"

The really big news is that I'll be leaving the barn because I bought a small farm with 2 of my friends--we'll call them Ted and Alice. I work with Alice--she's the one who got me into horses in the first place--and we decided we'd like to have a farm for our retirement. We're a ways away from that, but we also felt we should do this now while we're still able to handle the work, and then we'll be in better shape for retirement. That's the theory anyway! So we bought a place with just under 6 acres, a 12-stall barn, 3 pastures, and a 3100 square-foot house that has 2 master suites. It's really ideal. We haven't moved in yet, but we hope to get everything wrapped up by early November. We have 6 horses all together, so we are well on our way to filling the barn!

This means I'll also have more stories to tell--tales of stall mucking and hay stacking and feeding and cleaning and turning out... Won't that be fun??