It has been a challenging year. A year of the pandemic. A year of working from home. A year of getting occasional messages and complaints that my horse is making too much noise and I need to do something, anything, to fix it. A year of troubleshooting and trying solutions and overfeeding the horse and ending up with a horse that doesn’t paw in her stall when I’m at the barn, with inconsistent and mixed reviews about whether she’s pawing when I’m not.

I did the best I could with the information I had at any given time. I’m angry and sad and upset at the communication failures that got us to this point, and the things that have been said to me in the last month left me with anxious meltdowns at the idea of going to the barn. That’s not sustainable. None of this is sustainable. Horses are too expensive for my happy place to turn into somewhere I worried about going all the time.

I don’t enjoy change. I came to this barn to lease Confetti. I’ve learned a lot from the self-care setup here, from the other boarders and mentors, from the people who have watched me grow along the way as I was gifted Fetti and eventually purchased Polly. Ten years! Ten years of blood and sweat and tears turning my paddocks and tack rooms into something that worked for us, customizing, building. There were more projects in the works.

So. OK. Current barn isn’t working out. I’m grieving the loss of possibilities and community, and then I moved (ok, simultaneously) into problem-solving. If I move barns, I need a trailer. I want a 2h slant gooseneck for easier trailer camping. My budget is slim to low. Bless supportive partners who told me to buy the trailer I need for the next ten years instead of buying a beat-up rusty bare-minimum trailer. Set up truck for hauling trailer. Bought trailer – 2h GN slants are near-impossible to find at a reasonable price used. Brought trailer home.

Simultaneously, I researched every local barn I could find within 45 minutes of home. Thank you to all of you who have patiently answered my questions about places you’ve been at, commutes, places you know of, and more. We thought there was a good local spot lined up and made plans to move on the 1st. I feel dumb even writing this, but my anxiety skyrocketed all week and my gut feeling was just so strong that it isn’t the right place for my two, not right now. We’re rerouting and my mares will be moving at a local full-care barn with less trail access but also less anxiety screaming at me. It’s really rare for me to have that much mental turmoil over a decision. Occasionally I get a strong sense of “yes, this is the right move, go do it” (drive four hours to buy a trailer on 24 hours notice? Sure!) so.. I’m trying hard to honor it when it goes the other way. I’m entirely aware this reads like I’m somewhat crazy and I can’t argue with that either. I don’t know, y’all, I don’t know. More on barn hunting in another post since it’s always interesting to me to read what folks are looking at, looking for, etc.

I’ve been slowly taking stuff home over the last month. Ten years of stuff in two of my own small tack sheds? It adds up fast. I have a pile I need to list online, the bare minimum stuff still at the barn, and sort of tentative plans of what will live in my trailer. (Plus a chunk of the garage.. er.. ok, the entire garage floor right now is claimed by my pony stuff. Oops.) But the trailer has to get a few repairs done, so no sense moving things in yet, but I need to call and schedule that now that the pony move isn’t up in limbo any more. One step at a time.

So: friends, bloggers, commenters. What do you keep in your tack trunks? What are your must-haves? Send photos, tack trunk recommendations, everything! This is totally new territory for me and I’m going to throw all my anxious energy the next few weeks into figuring it out.