Absence means I'm crazy

I'm not actually crazy, it's just that life is crazy. Since starting this blog, with every intention of daily or close-to-daily posts, I have found that some days, months, half-years, go by without anything to share. 

Err... not nothing to share, but nothing I think is interesting. But I do enjoy reading other bloggers' posts, regardless of how interesting the post is. So. We try again. 

Let's see, what's happened since March?

My old barn sold. It was a neat place with long runs attached to each stall. Perfect! Sure there were other things going on that weren't... healthy, but the horses seemed happy. At any rate, a hunter/jumper trainer bought the facility. Rumor was she was getting rid of all the runs, turning 18 stalls into 6, and revamping the entire facility. 

That's all great for her but it meant we had to get out (plus, board was going to double!)

Barn hunting is the worst. Columbus is the only city I've boarded around and aside from two facilities 45 minutes to the east, there's really nothing in the way of kick-ass boarding facilities. Kick-Ass not more than my mortgage facilities I should say. (and my mortgage isn't inexpensive!)

I finally found a barn through a dressage trainer I was working with (and hope to again once I graduate grad school)(I almost wrote "grade school" - let's hope not) on the west side of town. 

A thing to note about Columbus, and Ohio in general. Most visitors come to Ohio and tell us how flat and boring Ohio is. This is not true. If you look at Interstate 71 (runs diagonally from the north-east corner of Ohio to the Southwest corner), pretty much everything west of that is flat and everything east is hilly. The more east you go, the hillier. I wanted to board east of Columbus where the hills are (easier conditioning, holla!) but those facilities are at least 40 minutes away. Or expensive, or shady, or mis-run, etc. There's also a fox-hunting club out east, and those two kick-ass facilities. I boarded at one of them for a year and cried when I left (15 miles of trails with jumps!)

So, I went west. I swore I'd never go west. West is flat and boring. Thing is though, I found a barn out there. A nice barn, a handful of boarders, and the owners are amazing. It's a huge grain farm with tons of acreage to ride on and beautiful arenas. The pastures are gorgeous and well-used. The feed is top-notch and the attention to detail right up there too. The stalls are huge and well-lit. And above all, the horses there are content. I couldn't ask for more. 

We moved at the beginning of December and Dassah-mare settled in after a couple of days. I thought she was going to get us kicked out because she wouldn't settle down but that was me being paranoid. go me. 

So yeah. More on the next post. 






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