Saturday morning at the barn - counting my blessings

It's Saturday morning and I'm sitting on the patio drinking my coffee, listening to music, and watching the horses. The sunrise was beautiful and the horses are enjoying the sun and finishing breakfast. How lucky am I? Life is hard and everyone faces difficulties but everyone is also given moments that should be savored.

The last couple years have been hard and I have been going though what my astrologer called a cycle of tearing down in order to rebuild. It would have been easy to get lost in the challenges and not seen the opportunities. I am so lucky to have so many wonderful people in my life who were here to help me see the light in the dark. In the darkest times when I was lost in depression I was able to look at my friends and use them as a mirror of my true worth. Friends are a mirror of our soul.

The music plays on, I am reaching for the essence of my dreams, the horses are content and I am counting my blessings. Come join me some Saturday morning at the barn and we can count our blessings together. Blessings to you all.

Turnout, not every horse has it, but every horse should

I recently heard a question that surprised me so much I decided I had to post my thoughts. I'm not a boarding stable, but the economy being what it is, in order to defray some of the costs of keeping my own horses, I decided to take in some equine boarders. In my opinion, one of the biggest selling points of my barn is that I have multiple large turnouts. Before I lived here it was always my biggest challenge when trying to find a clean safe place for my horses.

It has definitely been an educational experience listening to different horse people and finding out what is important to them and it just proves my belief that horse philosophy is just like religious philosophy. Everyone has their own personal tenets of belief and it is best to just respect their right to have an opinion, even if it hurts you to do so.


So the question that started this diatribe? A very nice woman asked me after I explained all the services offered at my barn, "Why would I want my horse to have turnout? My initial response was a "huh". Fortunately I was able to gather my thoughts and ask the question, " Why wouldn't you want your horse to have turn out? ". The answer was "I don't want him to get hurt." Again, I have to respond, "huh".

It is my belief that in order to have a mentally healthy horse the horse needs as much time as possible to be a horse. This means turnout, the ability to move around a large area at will, explore, graze, roll, run, buck and fart. Additionally, horses who get turnout on a daily basis are much less likely to stock up, are more flexible, less stiff and better conditioned.

The experts agree check out the following links:

http://www.equisearch.com/horses_riding_training/english/dressage/turnout_041105/

http://www.equisearch.com/horses_riding_training/english/dressage/dressageturnout_072307/

http://www.animavet.com/MakingDo.pdf

With the trend to Natural Horsemanship and barefoot horses being more natural (that's a rant for another day) why aren't people willing to acknowledge that there is nothing natural or healthy about a horse being confined to a stall 24 hours a day.

The horses in my barn all agree, turnout, not every horse has it but every horse should.