There are many reasons why we get frustrated with our boarding stables, even the best ones. We may want more turnout time, or we may want deeper bedding, or more hay, or better supervision, or fewer jumps in the ring, or more jumps in the ring. The list of complaints can go on and on.
The next time you get frustrated with your boarding stable and threaten to go off to buy some land where you can keep your own horses, your own way, slow down and take a deep breath . . . and then ask:
Do you really want to ride by yourself, or do you want to have friends around to ride with and people to help you when you need it’
Do you really want to spend $10,000 on footing for just your own two horses’ And another $15,000 on a tractor/mower’ Or $3,000 for a set of jumps’ Or $2,000 for a vinyl dressage arena’
Do you want to skip a weekend showing or a week’s vacation with your family because the person you lined up to take care of the horses suddenly can’t help out’
Do you really want to shovel all that snow in the winter and cut all that grass in the summer’
Do you really want to drive the kids 10 miles farther to everything after school, now that you live in the boonies’
And, while, you’re at it . . .
Do you really want to get up an hour or two earlier every morning so you can feed, turn out and clean stalls, and then take a long shower to keep the smell of horse off your business suit’
Do you really want to skip going out to dinner, shopping or the movies occasionally on the way home from work because you have to get home at a certain time to feed the horses’
Do you really want to stack 50-pound bags of feed and 40-pound bales of hay’
Do you really want to slosh water from the house to the barn in the dead of winter because the pipes froze again’
Do you really want to be running out to get the horses in during a sudden severe thunderstorm’
Do you really want to be thinking about buying hay and shavings six months before you think you’ll need them, so that your source doesn’t dry up’
Do you really want to repair fences’
Do you really want to add the pressures of keeping appointments with the veterinarian, farrier and feed man to the pressures of job and family’Do you really want to deal with a mountain of manure . . .
Or, do you really want someone else to do it for you’
’Til next month,
-Margaret Freeman
