Status Of The Horse Hunt, Needle Pegged at Overwhelm

Riding

Awareness of the outside world. Four free ebooks. “The Library’s role is to make sure no perspective, no idea, no identity is erased.” NYPL: Books For All: NYPL Supports the Right to Read Banned Books, Marx, President of The New York Public Library, April 13, 2022.
~~~

tl;dr. Nothing new. Felt like time for an update. Title basically covers it.

So, how is the horse hunt going? Nowhere fast.

Talked to a few folks. Ran out of gas.

I want to tell horse sellers that we are not tire kickers.

Really.

We truly want a third smiling face in the barn.

It’s just that there are times I don’t see how to move from here to there. I get overwhelmed and lose the ability to make a decision. My flight or fight response gets stuck in freeze.

In General

So many imponderables. Talent of horse. Goals of rider. How does A mesh with B? Experience versus expense. How much of the former versus how much of the latter?

The more I do this, the more I wonder how anyone buys a horse ever.

Get help, you say? I smile indulgently at your optimism. I can’t get anyone around here to give me a riding lesson. No way they will help with horse shopping. Sell me a horse they have in the barn? Absolutely. Take time out to go looking? Say what?

Moving on.

Any then, our record. Of the half a dozen horses I have bought over my life, more help I get, the worse it turns out. Trainer advice got me a horse unsuitable for the discipline. Vet advice got me a horse who wouldn’t stay sound. The best we’ve done was Previous Horse & Mathilda, who we found ourselves in the classifieds, back when there were such things as classifieds.

The Geography

There are jumping Saddlebreds out there! Way out there. The ones we have found are 7 to 10 hours away. A very different proposition from living in the Mid-Atlantic where you could see three candidates at three different barns in an afternoon. Not insurmountable. Requires logistics.

The Try Out, Flat

Given how I feel about getting on new horses, how am I ever going to try new ones?

The Try Out, Jumping

Me: I want to ride Preliminary Eventing

Also me: I can’t jump a crossrail.

Seller: !?!?!?!?!

The Barn

Our barn is optimized up for two horses. Two places to eat. Two of us. Hay storage for two. A pasture that supports two horses.

More horses will require new barn protocols. More storage. Clearing and fencing fields.

Again, not insurmountable. The surmountables are starting to add up.

The Last Horse

I’ll be 60 this year. At some point, I will own my last horse. Maybe not the next one, maybe not the one after that, but some day. I’m not near the bottom of the box (AFAIK), but I can see the bottom peaking through the cereal.

The Past Purchases

Everyday I look out at my two failures. Happy. Yes. Healthy. Yes. Successful sport horses? Not so much. [In Which I Complicate An Introduction]

This squashes my hope like an elephant on a grape.

All I do is give out a little whine.

Ba-dum-ching.

Remember to tip your server.

Outro

These are issues rather than problems.

They simply require energy and fortitude.

Horse Hunt Posts, Current Iteration

[Horse Shopping, What I Am Looking For] February 2022
[Wondering If What I Want Is Really What I Want] February 2022
[Considering Saddlebred VERSAtility] February 2022
[Tertium Quid, Redux] 2021
[Tertium Quid] 2017, still true

Onwards!
Katherine