About Breakups. . .

Well, I said I'd post more about breakups, didn't I?

Yesterday we put in our notice at our current barn. I know, it makes almost exactly one year that we've been here. To me, that's not very long. My first boyfriend lasted a year and half - a very long time when you're fifteen - and the first boarding barn lasted almost three. One year is not a particularly long time.

But I swear if we had to go through another winter at this barn, all four of us - my mom, myself, and the horses - would go absolutely crazy.

As I mentioned yesterday, the horse world is a very very small place. This is why I try to keep complaining about anyone or anything to a very vague minimum, and I haven't mentioned the many many times over the past six months that we've gone to look at potential new barns. This is also why I won't complain too much about the current barn in this post, but I will definitely explain the main reason. It is not a value judgment against the barn owner, just a personal preference that is unfortunately impossible to fulfill at our current location.

My horses need to go outside.

I mean it.

Pandora and McKinna were in their stalls for approximately 23 hours per day this winter. At least four months straight. Every day when we arrived, we put them in the arena to let them work off some steam while we took care of stalls. Every day, they ran and bucked and generally acted like idiots, because they'd been standing in their stalls all day and night. Pandora took to flipping her head in her stall, which drove me nuts, but can you blame the girl?

Right now, they're out 24/7 in a paddock, and it's great. Sure, I'd prefer a safe pasture with well-maintained grass, but grass year-round is practically an impossibility in the very soggy Willamette Valley. They're cheerful. We feed them extra hay, because the 4 flakes per day included with board just isn't enough. Both horses are thrilled to see us, because it means their daily share of beet pulp and grain, but they're perfectly content to be in their paddocks too.

But I can't go through another winter like that.

It left me feeling tense. My mother and I are both pretty empathetic towards animals (read: big softies). I can't stand it when my very fit, high-energy mare is crammed in a 12x12 box all day. It makes my skin crawl just thinking about it now. Every time I thought about going out to the barn, where Pandora was practically jumping out of her own skin, my stomach started to sink.

Now, Pandora is a very, very good-natured horse. Even when she's 'up,' she's polite and manageable and will never run you over. But honestly, if you were cooped up in a 12x12 room all day every day and let out for an hour for some mental and physical exercise, they'd call it prison.

So, we finally found a place. For the first time, we'll be going full care. It's expensive, but it includes some pretty high-quality free choice hay, Safe Choice (not my first choice of grains but not bad), alfalfa for hard keepers, turnout/in, blanket/unblanket, stall cleaned, and so on. For Pandora, free-choice hay is huge, especially really nice hay. Between that and supplemental alfalfa, she should hardly need any grain.

The arena is pretty nice and a good size. They have a wash rack, no hot water, but we've gone through winters with McKinna without hot water before. Nice tack room, nice feed room. Everything appeared well-organized and clean.

Most importantly, our horses can go out. Their stalls have all-weather runs attached, and the turnout situation is very flexible. From the sound of it, her horses get turned out most of the year anyway, in the all-weather outdoor during the nasty months if necessary. But she also said if we'd like ours to be out on one of the bigger pastures year-round, we could do that too.

Just like with Pandora's recovery, I'm cautiously optimistic. I was super excited about our current barn just before we moved in, too, though I honestly thought they'd get year-round turnout. Communication error, apparently.

Anyway, that's the big news for the week!



I rode Pandora today for the first time since Lily Glen (mid-June). It was very weird for both of us at first, I think! After a little while, we both got used to each other again, and had some fairly normal walk-trot work for about 20 minutes. So far, so good. I'm still not willing to be too optimistic and start setting goals, but she hasn't taken a bad step yet. Hopefully we'll get through the reconditioning process with no hiccups and be ready for another rating in September.