For the rowers keep on rowing

Change is not always something i’m really great at. I tend to be a creature of habit. I have to make a real effort to embrace change, to surrender to change, to move into change. I have found the older I get the more I can roll with the punches. I still get terribly stressed but its less traumatic. It’s time for a change. I could see the writing the wall and I am embracing it with both excitement and of course my usual stress and fear. I am moving my horses.

I was getting what I’m calling a Georgia Ave Ulcer. Georgia Ave is the road I drive to the barn. Its a very busy street, a main roadway and the only direct way to my barn from my home. Its also filled with morons who try to kill me on the road every single day. Seriously people out here drive like twits, i don’t know how they get a drivers license and i routinely see 4 to 5 people a day on their goddamn cell phones drifting onto other lanes clearly with the intent to run me personally off the road. I come from CA where that shit costs you 500 bucks when caught, we are all hands free.  45 minutes or more on this road twice a day was literally giving me an ulcer. For reals! Zantac and antacid have become my best buddies.

Contributing to my angst was my desire to have more control over my horses daily lives and being in a regular boarding facility you don’t get to make those kinds of decisions. Like hay amounts, the kind of hay fed, type of grain, turnout schedule, blanketing etc. Those decisions are almost always made for you and though some places are more likely than others to take your wishes into consideration you have to ask, you have  to be granted the consideration. So when the opportunity came up to move both the girls into a self care place, closer to the house, I had to consider it. When you have two its not as easy as one to find places for them both at the same time. I am moving them both April 1st.

Though it will be very different and a lot more work i’m going to give it a go. Its a beautiful place run by a non profit, 6 acres of pristinely maintained pasture for a 4 stall barn. Feed room, hay loft, tack room with storage and lockers. I’ll be sharing with one other person who has 2 horses of her own. The barn is connected by a breezeway to the barn next door also 4 stalls and 6 acres and I’m hoping to get in on their coop to cut down on some of the day to day work as my barn mate likes to do her own thing and not be tied down to schedules. I also will need to buy my own hay, grain, clean my own stalls, turn my own horses out and in. So i will be hiring some barn help so that i can get a  bit of a break here and there. Lots of new things for me to master. Its not a perfect place and has some draw backs like no hot water, my riding ring is across the street and i will miss my daily walks with M and Peanut. Though they will come visit me for walks at my new place (and trailer in for rides when Willa is better!) and i’m not leaving my current place on anything but good terms so that i can visit and still help M with Willa during her laminitis flare up if she needs me to. The benefits in this case out weigh the drawbacks. Spring is coming and i can put my girls out 24/7 when the weather is a stable 40 degrees or above until it gets too hot with summer. I think they will both like that.

Change isn’t always easy but sometimes its the just right thing to do.