A year in a few paragraphs......... (Part 2)

So towards the end of March I finally landed myself a job, nothing special, but something to pay for the horses and all the competitions. Luckily the timing was the end of winter pretty much, so I put out the 2 ponies and 2 of the horses, and only had 3 in. This meant that I had to go down to the yard before work, in my work clothes, and let them all out. Thankfully, this wasn't a huge hardship, as all I had to do was open their stable doors and they knew the way to the field, which had a nice little fence to guide them to it, and then I just closed the gate. There was however the one morning when my horse got a bit thick and decided he wanted to go a different way and took my wing mirror with him. Let's just say both him and I are on a par with not being morning people!!

After about 3 weeks I was able to put all the horses out, which was great. I'm not the best at getting up early, so it was nice to have that extra time to hit the snooze button!

 

Another thing that made that period hard was that the guy who worked in the yard had a few heart attacks and was laid up for 2 months. Which meant I had to take care of their other animals too, chickens and donkeys.  As well as be in the yard 7 days a week - livery was looking so nice about then!! I feel like I'm being very moany here, but I guess it's all relative.

 

My routine became go to work for 8.30, work till 5, get home, eat, chill for maybe half an hour and then head up to the yard. If I wasn't ready to leave the house by 7, Rusty would go nuts!! He would start jumping up on me as if to say 'Come on, let's go!' We'd get down to the yard, check all the horses and then bring in whoever was being ridden. Ride, feed, and go home. On repetition. But with horses you have to be prepared to put in the hours - not just the money!! And the payback you get is worth it.......