After The Rain … Comes The Rainbow

The seemingly endless rain has finally ended, hooray! The forecast is projecting sun and partly cloudy skies through the end of the month, which would be really really nice. I know we need the water, but holy guacamole, not all at once! The ground can only absorb so much. It just seemed like we got storm after storm and there was hardly any time to breath before we got hit again with another torrential flood of water.

I resorted to emergency measures and went all out filling a billion (in actually, it was only like 40, but it felt like a billion) sandbags and setting them up to redirect the flow of water and prevent flooding as much as possible around my shed and by Mitch’s shelter. I started out with a few bags at the local fire station, recruited Mo, my barn buddy to help with even more (and helped her fill a bunch of bags for herself) and then hie-thee-hithered off to the County Emergency Center to fill even more sand bags. Overall though, it was worth the hours and hours of intense manual labor knowing that Mitch was nice and dry and comfortable.

It’s been a month since Jet passed out of our lives (but never out of our hearts). The weather was so horrendous, I have felt that sense of relief that she did not have to endure it at all because it would have been very hard for her. It still doesn’t make her loss hurt any less though. It’s sort of a stab in the gut driving down the road and not seeing her in her paddock waiting for me to feed breakfast or dinner. it was something I was very used to after almost 12 years of it.

Since it’s been raining, I haven’t really had a lot of time to continue to tackle my tack shed reorganizing project. It was something I started before Jet’s colic because I wanted to tidy up my shed and figure out how much stuff I didn’t really need in life. It’s gotten more of a priority now, since I’m only down to Mitch and currently, am not planning on another horse, as I’d like to enjoy doing things with him in 2023 and the money I’d save by not paying for feed, etc. x2 would be spent on maybe finally going to that endurance ride I’ve wanted to go on for years, or doing that schooling dressage show again or go do some trail trials. I am paying double board, but it wasn’t much to begin with, and it reserves that space on the off-chance that the right horse will enter our lives.

But we’ll take that moment when it comes.

So in anticipation of being the owner of a single horse again, I don’t need all the tack that I have, and that means starting to cut down (but I also kind of didn’t, and went in big time for some “retail therapy” where I ended up buying more things). Like a new saddle. I can already imagine blog readers going “But … you already have 4 saddles!” Hear me out though! I ended up selling my Ghost Quevis (yeah, it was my favorite saddle, but in the end, I wanted a more traditional looking western treeless) and my Big Horn western which weighed 27 lbs and I doubt either Mitch nor I shall miss it greatly. Selling both those saddles freed up space (and budget) for purchasing a Colorado Springs “Denver” from Equinnovations in Canada. It looks like a Freemax Western (or a Freemax Western looks like it as it might predate the Freemax Western). It’s pretty much the ‘lovechild’, I suppose, of the saddles I sold — two out, one in — that’ll leave me with a dressage saddle and a western treeless for Mitch. Two saddles for one horse seems pretty reasonable. I’m also keeping my Barefoot Arizona because I can use it for catch riding any friends’ horses (like Ruby, the ‘mini’ Belgian) and for beach/river rides when I don’t want to get my good western treeless wet and dirty, and as a spare saddle if I borrow anyone else’s horse to take a non-horse-owning friend or a family member riding.

I also ordered a new western bridle set and breastcollar because I have really really wanted a nice dark brown beta set with the Jeremiah Watt/Horseshoe Brand hardware for a long time. It’ll make a nice western set if I do any western dressage shows (also considering doing online/video shows). Mitch’ll be stylin’ this spring.

So I guess that’s where we’re at now. Waiting for the mud to dry up so we can start hitting the trails. I’m going to be posting to my local equestrian Facebook group to see if I can find some trail buddies to meet up with. Gotta see what this year brings. It’s a change, here’s to making it a positive one.