I’m not linking to any posts here, mostly because I still can’t go back and read them.

The first quarter of the year was a lot of barn stress. I didn’t write about it, and I didn’t really acknowledge it anywhere, but I had to talk myself into going to the barn. I actively avoided people there. I was constantly afraid of getting yelled at (and it happened – this wasn’t an irrational fear). I threw a bunch of money into trying to fix problems (more bale bags, change the door, contemplated hobbling the horse in the stall but didn’t get to it, bought a thousand dollars worth of stall mats) and after being told I hadn’t done anything to solve the problem, I was done. I looked at local barns, almost committed to one, backed out, committed to another. I almost drove up to Washington to buy a trailer. Instead, a friend found me one a few hours south. I drove down, bought it, gave notice, moved the horses, and spent the next month settling the horses into a new barn while getting repairs done on the trailer. We weren’t quite kicked out of old barn, but the owner made it clear (and I think even outright said to me) she was glad to see us go. This really soured the nine years of good memories at the place. It’s no longer somewhere I can recommend.

The second quarter (well, roughly) was work stress and craziness. June in particular was bad and involved me working crazy hours and going out to pat the ponies instead of ride. It wasn’t great. I knew it was coming, I knew it was just one month of awful, and I knew it would end. My partner and I were able to get vaccinated and made a cross-country trip to visit friends and family plus make it to a friend’s wedding. The ponies were turned out daily and I appreciated full-care barns. I hauled Fetti off to the park a few times, and she gave a coworker’s daughter a pony ride. It was fabulous.

The third quarter of the year I sent Polly off to training and we did one more cross-country trip for another wedding. Polly came up lame, and lame again, and I threw more money at diagnostics. Fetti and I puttered around and finally hit zen this quarter at new barn. We didn’t have particular agendas. She picked the speed and the length, and occasionally I overruled. It was a lot of very solo stuff for Q2 and Q3. And then everything went to hell and we put her down very unexpectedly at the end of Q3.

Polly’s vet visit was two weeks later. We drove up, concluded she needed surgery, scheduled surgery for the following week. Q4 is all Polly-rehab. We drove home the day before the storm and started handwalking in the worst weather of the year. Several other friends have had their older horses pass in the last few months. It comes in waves, I guess. I borrowed a friend’s pony to ride, so I’ve been able to split my time between the two of them, plus get help on the ground now that I’m riding Polly. Next vet visit is tomorrow, where we see how she goes at a trot.

It’s been a really hard year. I’m over it. May 2022 be a better one.