Want...or Need?

When I was little my mom had all kinds of little catch phrases for different situations.

Say we passed someone smoking on the street. "What happens when you smoke cigarettes, Carli?" she would ask.

"You get cancer and then you DIE," a wide-eyed little Carla would respond.

Say I was being bad. "I'm going to call 1-800-GYPSIES on you!" she would say.

"NOOOOOO!" I would say.
(side story: When I went to Madrid, a Roma woman chased me on the street trying to get me to buy something, and kept yelling, "NO TENGAS MIEDO DE LA GITANA!!!" at me. By that point I had gotten over my gypsy fear though.)

And whenever I saw some amazing thing on TV that I NEEEEEEEEEDED MOM PLEEEEEEAAAAAASE, she would say, "Well do you need  it or do you want it?"

In hindsight most of these catchphrases were pretty bizarre,  but the last one definitely stuck, and since  Little Bay Horse  brought up the topic, I thought I would get up on my soapbox about needs vs. wants in the horse world too. Not that I'm qualified to do so, but hey, that's what is so great about blogging.

Also I am home sick and Dr. Gato has recommended I lift my spirits by reading or writing

Of course, unless you rely on horses for your livelihood, they are always going to be more of a want rather than a need. But once you give in to the "want" of having a horse, all of a sudden so many "needs" start piling up. Shoes, vet, shelter, feed, tack that fits. These are pretty basic things I think anyone would agree are "needs" (at least for a horse who is rideable). But what about other things? Supportive boots? Supplements? Lessons? Shows? What divides a need from a want, when objectively they're all really wants when it comes to horses?

Although I love horses, I do see it as a hobby, not an all-consuming force that takes over my life. Through trial and error I've realized I don't really want to ride 4-5 days a week, or train up a completely green horse, or even have a set schedule of hacking Mondays, dressage on Tuesdays, jumping Wednesdays,  etc...I just do what's fun for me on that particular day, and what I can afford. Even as a kid, it sort of baffled me that some of the girls at my barn were showing at rated shows practically every weekend. When it comes to special wants like shows and clinics, I think that they need to be just an occasional thing so you have some time to look forward to them! (Don't get me wrong, though--I was WAY jealous of those girls.)

And today as an adult, I kind of scratch my head when I see people struggling to make ends meet for themselves, but they have a $2000+ saddle, brand-name everything, and board at a super-expensive barn. It's like, don't they know life would be SO much easier if some of those costs (and in some cases, debts) were reduced?

I'm not trying to point at anyone in particular, since I've seen so many people this applies to, and I'm not trying to say you shouldn't ride if you have limited means. There are lots of ways to ride for free, or to work off some of the costs! However, I do think it is so tempting to justify crazy spending just because your horse is your baby and you want to take the best possible care of him. There is an article on a sort of related topic on Horse Nation today--and although it is blasphemy to say it in equine bloggerland, I do think it is possible to love your horse too much if it's at the expense of the rest of your life!

I know from experience that it's not fun to have to say no to going out for lunch with barn buddies because you have perfectly good groceries at home, or to skip the XC schooling day along with all of the hauling, coaching and other fees. But it's also not fun to subsist on peanut butter sandwiches, and only drive to absolutely necessary places because you bought a saddle on a whim and literally have no money until your next paycheck!

Anyway, to avoid ending on a  know-it-all note, I thought I'd make a list of some of my top horsey wants right now:

Joules everything. I don't own anything by Joules, but I drool over everything by them in the Dover and Smartpak catalogs every time they arrive! Their clothes are the perfect mix of preppy and weird. And so springy!

I like all these patterns, so why not wear them all at once? Oh yeah, because it's a $90 polo.

Straightforward stripes on the outside, party on the inside.

Fuzzy Mountain Horse boots! Well, now winter is HOPEFULLY over (though there might be snow on the ground for my birthday next week, which has never happened in my entire life). I would totally pick these up if I found a really good deal used...but I just can't see the sense in buying them full price when ridiculously cold winters like we just had are the exception rather than the rule in MD.

If the dog was included I'd pay full price.

A Melton coat for hunting: Now if the whole thing with Polly works out as planned, and I end up hunting during the formal season, this creeps closer to a "need" on the spectrum. Of course those are a lot of "if"s, so when I meet with her owner, I'm going to ask if it's something I should shop around for in the meantime...or ask Byron to shop around for me as a birthday gift :)

A cubbing jacket for hunting, and 10,000 patterned stocks: You may have gathered from the Joules stuff above that I like pattens...the more the better. Tweed cubbing jackets and patterned stock ties simply enable my love of matching different patterns together. Some call that mismatching, but where's the fun in that?

 What are your horsey wants?

TWO Posts in ONE Weekend. WHAT?!

Remember when this used to be the norm? Ha--well I'm trying to be better about blogging, and the fact that I am excited about spring and my new lease helps too.

So I have a question for you all--especially those of you who take on extra hours or part-time/freelance work to support your horse habit. I keep butting up against the annoying fact that the hours in the day are finite. I like to get my work done before I go out to do something fun, but if there's an additional non-horsey thing to do, like visiting family or fixing up something in the house...well, there goes my whole weekend, and I'm at the barn at 6pm on a Sunday!

I'm trying to fit freelance writing in on weekday mornings (alternating with writing/exercising in the AM, depending on whether I'm going to ride after work) but it doesn't always happen. Theoretically I could write in the evening, but usually I'm tired from work and expending more brainpower is the last thing I want to do.

I used to write in the morning all the time in college, actually, when I had a writerly roommate. We had a really nice routine of waking up, making tea, and then retreating to our desks to write overly serious poetry (me) and a novel (her) for an hour or a half hour before classes. Of course, "early morning" had a different definition in college (8 or 9 am) than it does now...

So, discuss: How do you make enough money to ride, while also having the time to ride?

HorseNation posts this week:

The 7 Types of Boarders at Every Barn 

Share with your friends! I feel like this one could break 10,000 views!

9 Horse Ads From Back in the Day

Featuring Vigor's Horse-Action Saddle to cure gout, obesity and female hysterics...yeah we know what that means...

NEWS: A Gene That Determines Your Horse’s Personality?

Pretty interesting study. I was really tempted to go all sarcastic with Parelli Horsenalities but I wasn't sure if that was a copyrighted term that would get HN in trouble. Anyway I hope they do more of this genetic research to figure out its training implications.

A cool Valentine's gift

So with the Snowpocalypse last week, Byron's Valentine's gift to me got delayed in the mail. He is good at taking a hint when I find cool things on English Tack Trader...

It's a belt! It's a martingale! It's both!

 It's on the smallest hole when I wear it with jeans so unfortunately I don't think I can wear it when I ride--I don't have any low-rise breeches. But it's definitely fun for just wearing around, like a little secret...everyone else sees it as an asymmetrical belt, but only I know it is a horsey thing!

Pay no attention to the cat perching in the background...

Maybe one day I'll have it altered to have it shortened. No more room to punch holes, sadly. But still pretty cool!

I actually had a surprisingly good ride with Midnight on Thursday, even in a slightly crowded arena with a jump lesson going on--rather than fussing about whether or not he's round and nagging him with my leg, I just sort of stopped worrying about it, did my regular warmup with a lot of leg yields and spiral in/out, and it happened. Of course. I am still 100% certain I would like to end the lease though, and I've broken the news to a few other barn friends. It's kind of awkward, like those last few days at a job when you're in limbo.

Now that winter is (mostly? hopefully?) over and I feel like less of a sloth, I'm getting into waking up early and exercising again. Indoors with yoga and cardio barre videos (from Yogamazing and here), but still! I'm looking forward to feeling fit again, and to doing fun new things with Miss Polly. The list of MD hunter paces is out...

Yeah wine.

That is all.

Moving Ahead--With Wedding and Horses

Yes! Hillary of Equestrian at Hart guessed it. I will be having a library wedding. We just booked the Peabody Library in Baltimore and I am SO EXCITED to have my wedding there in the spring of 2015. Byron and I met when I tutored him at the UMD Writing Center, and his family and my friends are all very bookish. It just seemed perfect.

So gorgeous!

A book nook as you enter

And the whole place smells like books!

So that is very exciting--one major planning item down.  And in contrast to all of the other places we were looking at, all of the details just seem obvious to me with this venue. For example, we are going to go meet the caterers in a few weeks and while I'm down in Baltimore I plan to visit the Book Thing. It's a warehouse with no AC or heat in a semi-sketchy area where you can donate books and take as many as you want for free.

Can we say used books as party favors? Yes, we can. Because really, who wants little knick-knacks with the date someone else got married on them? Or candy that guests will forget to take home? Even if not everyone takes a book, I have NO problem taking the leftovers. I know it's early to be thinking favors, but whatever, I'd rather get little piddly details out of the way sooner.

On the horse front--snow. So. Much. Snow.

Not much riding has been happening, with over a foot of snow this week (not a big deal in some places, but in MD it's crazy!). And there is NO chance the foxhunting thing I planned for next week is going to happen...Betsy at Hunter's Rest in VA said the snow is up to the second rail of her fences! Terrible conditions for riding, trailering, or doing pretty much anything.

Oh well. Money saved I guess...

And on the new horse front...I came to a decision, without really hemming and hawing about it publicly on my blog. Basically, what I did was call several hunt clubs in my area and ask if they knew of any members who had horses for lease--very old school since I'm much more accustomed to being able to search online!

One of the farms I went to was Pleasant Prospect. OH MY GOD. The place is amazing. I didn't take pictures but there's a turf track, ALL kinds of different jumps built into the paddock fences, and everything is absolutely immaculate, from the white fences to the tack room to the grooming supplies. I had seen their ads in the Equiery (our MD horse classifieds magazine) for years and thought I would never be able to afford to ride there. The country club is literally just down the road.

It turned out, though, that the barn manager was really willing to work with me and figure out something that would work for my situation. She put me on a TB named Chapel to see what I could do, and we went on a really fun trail ride, WTC, but no jumping since it was pretty wet. I got mud ALL over my boots, which I had meticulously cleaned since I was meeting her...ha!

She also added something new to my trail-riding toolbelt. With all the dressage I've been doing lately, I had sort of un-trained myself from looking too far ahead. With Midnight, if you're off looking in the distance, he loses focus and reverts back to the attention span of a squirrel. But of course, if you're reacting to hills and dips in the trail just a few strides ahead, it's too late, and you don't have time to half-halt your horse's legs under him to prepare to go down a hill, or put the leg on to go through a water crossing positively. Very good to keep that thinking-ahead mentality in mind.

Ultimately I decided not to go with that farm though. She said that she would be willing to allow me to ride several different horses as part of my lease until I found one I liked, and she would let Byron to ride once he had some lessons, but I think all of her horses (mostly hot, fit Thoroughbreds) would be a bit much for a complete beginner rider. And frankly, I don't think that is exactly what I need as I'm trying to regain confidence and learn a new sport. Maybe down the line I'll return to her when it comes time to buy a horse...

But for now, I went the complete opposite direction.

Meet Polly, the 8 year old Shire cross. Crossed with what, you may ask? Most likely another Shire, going by her size.

She clips. She bathes. She stands tied.  She lets you mess with her scratches without trying to kick your face off. Miraculous, compared to (ahem) some horses!!! I'm not the one riding in this picture, but when I was up, we jumped that barrel in the background there, and I took her on a little mini-trail ride around the farm. I got on and off multiple times, made sure she would stand still at the halt, and tested the brakes at the canter. She passed with flying colors as a safe, steady mount. Her owner said that most of her life (aside from the time spent as a PMU mare) has been foxhunting, and she often uses Polly as a guest horse/husband horse.

Of course there are tradeoffs. Her canter is more thunderous than it is smooth. Her carthorse trot is probably never going to approach Midnight's floaty dressage one. She isn't fit right now, so she's reluctant to canter in their indoor arena (something I'm very familiar with from the drafts at Gentle Giants!). And I don't think this barn has a designated "beer:30" area to enjoy a cold one with barn friends.

It does have a very cute puppy though.

But the price is right, and there are lots of other foxhunters at that barn to tag along with. The owner used to whip in for the Potomac Hunt before encountering some health problems and said I could go car-following with her husband (also a former foxhunter) next time the weather isn't completely awful. Her daughter, who is a racetrack trainer, also foxhunts and events, and gives lessons, so there will be some sort of help as I get started with Polly.

So that's starting in March! Hopefully good weather will come along with it. With this new lease my expectations have been tempered somewhat too. I don't expect Polly to be a horse I would eventually buy (though who knows), but I do have a specific goal I think I can achieve with her--foxhunting second field.

On a Whim

I set up another day to go foxhunting! This time on a weekday so it will be cheaper.

So excited. I have a day off work I need to use and so I emailed my connection with Old Dominion Hounds to see if we could go trail riding...you know, to kick off getting my butt in gear for spring riding again without spending much money? Schedules changed and I ended up having to take off on a day the hunt is supposed to meet...and wellll...she didn't exactly have to twist my arm. Almost without thinking about it, I said sure, I'll go hunting in the dead of winter! Hopefully there will be NO MORE SNOW!

[Wikimedia Commons]

So many of my riding exploits seem to happen that way--a barely thought-out email or call, and all of a sudden things kick into motion. This blog actually would not exist, and I might not even have picked up riding regularly again, if I hadn't been procrastinating on some paper my junior year of college. I honestly don't know what sparked the idea to call up the nearest farm to campus to ask if I could take lessons as I could afford them and work off practice rides. But I did, and this blog was born not long after.

Midnight--same thing. I was sort of in a rut with riding, and had some extra cash burning a hole in my pocket, so I started cruising DreamHorse. There was seriously no plan or anything--and somehow I ended up learning the basics of dressage and eventing.

Now, a $55 pair of tan windproof breeches is in the mail from Amazon for hunting (the Romfh Scandias--because for some reason, I still insist on buying breeches online even though it only works out half of the time). Just like last year, I'm in a riding rut and while there is no real plan, I do know that I had a BLAST in October and I can't get foxhunting off the brain. I'm reading about it like crazy (currently on Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man). It's always something I've dreamed of, so why not work in that direction?

Byron is also a big fan of me foxhunting. He did not like the dressage days when I would come home basically unenthused and wrapped up in a vicious cycle of what I could have done wrong, could have done better, why do I suck, blah blah blah. Dressage definitely scratches the same obsessive itch that editing does for me--but it's not necessarily a positive one all the time!

Recently I have gotten SERIOUSLY out of riding shape though, what with work, winter blahs, Midnight injuries/my issues with him, and the freezing cold and snow. When I have ridden I definitely feel it the next day! This weekend is supposed to stay above freezing though so I'm optimistic that maybe the snow will finally be gone and I can ride outside. And I may contact the hunt near me to see if they're going out Sunday and if I can go car following--something I've wanted to do for a long time, but weather and work have not cooperated.

So...stay tuned on that front!

And although I had some extreme grump-i-tude going on about wedding planning, Byron, my mom and I are going to visit what will (hopefully) be THE venue in a few days. Originally I thought it was WAY out of reach financially but my mom gets a discount through work and is practically begging for me to go with this place. Here's a hint: I would use something like this for save-the-date cards.

Any guesses?

[Etsy]