I'm still here!

I rode yesterday and it felt like I haven’t ridden in a million years. I was going to ride, then I wasn’t going to ride, then my helper said “are you sure you aren’t going to ride? Your horse misses you!” then I looked at the big red monster and decided I better ride. I only rode for about 20 minutes bareback. I’m still too lazy to adjust his saddle. And I didn’t feel like hauling out my western saddle that weighs 200 pounds. So I just hopped on bareback. Once I was up there I was very happy I decided to ride.


Pinecone is such a good boy, but he isn’t easy to ride. I’ll be the first to admit that. It’s not that he’s going to take off and leave you behind, or buck or rear, or anything scary. He just requires a lot of “encouragement” to get him going. My riding instructor thinks that he may have ulcers which may be the reason he lacks energy, and is grumpy when tacking up. I’ve been doing some reading on ulcers and I think I saw that 60% of horses have them and 90% of race horses have them. A lot of the symptoms sound about right. My riding instructor said that she talked to the vet last week about what we should do and she said she’d fill me in on what he thought we should do. We’ve always talked about getting his blood tested too just to see if there was anything fishy with that.

In other news the hubby and I have been looking at buying a home with some acreage. Sadly there isn’t a whole lot in our price range, but we have looked at a few, all foreclosures. Hubby’s horse is about 250 miles from here so he never gets a chance to ride. With the arm and a leg I’m paying each month for board I could be spending that towards a mortgage AND we could actually ride together!
 The first house we looked at I was in love with. It was built in 1928 and had amazing character, but sadly it hadn’t really been updated much since it was built. It would have been a huge money pit. It actually sold shortly after we looked at it and turned out to have asbestos and some pipes burst, so it was for the better that we didn’t have to deal with it. The other house we’ve been looking at is newer and in better shape. It’s a rambler built in 1976 and I like it more than I thought I would since I hate ramblers. the kitchen is HUGE, I never thought that would be something I'd want in a house but I do!

It’s on about 5.5 acres and has most of it fenced off into pastures. However it’s fenced with barbed wire. And the fence is down in a lot of spots. We could only see a bit of it since we’ve received a lot of snow this year but I think if we buy it I would want at least one strand of hot rope on the fence since we’d have to repair it anyways. But at least the fence posts are up that is the hard part of fencing!

The barn is in need of a lot of upgrading as well. It is divided into two parts. The first part was the original barn with two 10x10 stalls that haven’t been used in 20 years or more. The second part of the barn was newer and about 3 times the size of the original barn. The part with the stalls would have to be gutted and redone. 10x10 is just too small for my monster. I don’t plan on stalling the horses every night but I’d like two stalls for “just in case”. We plan on building a 3 sided shelter in the paddock for them as I think horses are healthier when they live outside. This coming from a girl who pays thousands of dollars a year to have her horse live comfortably in a stall lol.

But we don’t want to get our hopes up too high as there are some things with the house that need fixing, and updating and it may be a money pit too. But it’s an option that we have. I can’t wait until I can see my monster every single day and be able to kiss him on the nose.