Born Under an Unlucky Star

I have believed for awhile now that there are cosmic forces at play which do their best to make sure I can not have, ride, or enjoy horses.

But now Walker is going to make a full(-ish) recovery and lessons have been going fantastic.  In fact, I feel like I've learned more about position and the correct use of my body in the last month of lessons than I ever have .

However, one thing I have decided is that Walker's English days are done.  All that I'm learning from my current lessons are counter intuitive to the way I need to ride Walker.  He just won't have any of it, and that's perfectly acceptable.  He enjoys Western, and I think that together we are going to try some new ventures - not just WP, but maybe some trail, and he's going to do therapeutic riding.  Besides the fact that although he is improving, I still don't believe that he will ever be able to show too competitively without risking his soundness.

This is fine though because of my current lesson program.  My instructor is great.  She is cheap.  She gives me opportunities galore.  They are a barn family in no way I have ever seen it before, and they were welcoming me into their family before I even rode there.  They go to clinics together, shows together, and they hang out together on the weekends.

And now the barn is closing.

Yep.  The barn owner has decided he is going to shut it down come next November.  But given that Winter is a horrible time of year and they would like to show next year, my instructor is on the mad hunt for a new facility now that will accomodate all of her lesson horses and all of the boarders who want to stay in the family.

I mean, no big deal, right.  She just has to find a completely empty barn in Atlantic Canada for about 15+ horses.

Anyway, surprisingly enough, she found two barns, one which is big enough for all the boarders and one where she can put her lesson horses.  Both barns are about 40 minutes away.

What does this mean for me?  It essentially means my lessons are done.  They have decided to move any day now.  Within the next few months hopefully, but you never know.

Riding at the new barn would mean two things.  One, that I would no longer be riding with the people I ride with because almost every single one of them have their own horse.  They would be at the boarder barn.  That means I would ride with the children.  And when I say children, I mean kids under the age of 12.

Two, riding lessons on a weekday would be out of the question.  I realize that a lot of you travel that distance, if not more to the barn, but I would never make it.  I work late almost every day and I find it a hassle as it is to get to the barn that is 10 minutes away.  Riding lessons on the weekend would be possible but infrequent at best.  I'm simply not around every weekend.  Sometimes I'm working, sometimes I'm travelling, sometimes I'm just playing catch-up on the week.  And that is the time I always use to go visit my horse.

My instructor has offered to teach me lessons on Walker, but of course he can't be jumped and I'm fairly adamant that I'm going to let him be a Western horse for multiple reasons which range from his unsuitability for English to his soundness (and my desire to keep him that way).

So that, as they say, is that.

I will try my best to join her lesson program at the new barn, but I am not too optimistic.  My other options for lessons are also relatively undesirable (non-English barns or else barns that are too far away or else instructors who need me to have my own horse who can do those things).  So I guess I better enjoy the time I have, which isn't much.