Bring On The Dancing Horses - Finding Time

Happy 2019 everyone. Hope that your holiday season was spectacular and that your plans for the New Year include more quality time with your horse.

It's not easy finding time to ride when there is so much else to do. Aside from the other 'life stuff' that gets in the way, many of us spend much more time taking care of our horses than actually riding them. I confess this has been true for me over 2018. So as we step into the New Year, I figure I'd better change things up to avoid a repeat.

A good starting point to finding time to ride is to look at how you spend your time at the barn or on the farm. Chores are a necessary part of horse-keeping and while you may enjoy all the times you spend around horses, certainly time spent riding should be more than time spent taking care of their needs.

My husband Paul and I, have been in the horse breeding business for 25+ years. Last year we spent so much time away giving dressage clinics and for myself, much time writing about everything horse as a freelance writer/PRMarketing Specialist, that we determined we needed to disband or breeding herd and retire from horse breeding. Hence at the moment we have just 2 mares left for sale, and we are keen to have them sold to the right competition home so they can go off and enjoy stellar careers. Meantime of course, they need training. They haven't sold due mainly to the fact they don't have saddle time as they have been in the breeding shed. 

More time we don't have! 

Gambol's Middernacht ~ For Sale!

In the late Fall we tried to send one of the mares out for training with one of our past students that lives 4 hours drive away from our farm. Unfortunately while we had a contract with her for training, she did not have her own barn. While we had the trucker set up and the horse ready to go, when the barn owner finally sent me the boarding contract it was so onerous and so convoluted we couldn't entertain sending our mare there. So here the horse still sits,
quite contentedly munching down on hay and hanging out with her half-sister, who also hasn't received further training.

So the dilemna continues. How to find more time?

If you figure it out let me know!