My life has changed so much from when I started this little blog back in the day. I don’t keep it up like I should and it ends up costing a small fortune to leave it up. For that reason, I go back and forth on the decision to keep it up and running.
When I started it back in 2012, my passion for horses and riding was at an all time high. I was going somewhere riding all the time. I had friends to ride with and I enjoyed it more than anything else.
However, as I got older, my time was spent working 9-5 and taking care of a little boy. Then I met my husband, who doesn’t ride, and horses took a back seat to the relationship. Unfortunately, that’s how it continued to be until the present time. I didn’t stop riding completely, but it hasn’t been a priority. If I’m being really honest, somewhere along the way, it stopped being as fun too. I partly believe that is due to not having people to ride with and spending more time riding alone.
Life’s Lessons
Now that I’m older, I realize how important it is to have a community of people to spend time with. Unfortunately, due to my own choices, I don’t have that. I miss all my old friends that I use to ride with. Some I’ve kept in touch with but we don’t ride or see each other much. While others I’ve lost touch with and have no idea if they still ride or not.
However, I’ve got a strong desire to find a new community of like minded horse people to ride with. This will be the year I put aside my fears and make new friends. I’ll stop worrying about all the “what ifs” and focus on all the positives.
All that to say, the last 5+ years have been life changing and eye opening for me. There have been some rough patches, some new friends made, some old friends lost, loss of family members, and empty nester syndrome with a child growing up and moving out.
Loss of Confidence
When you experience so much life change, you can’t help but be affected by it mentally. It takes a toll on your soul and view of the world but in my case my self confidence too.
That lack of self confidence, subconsciously flowed over to riding horses and prevented me from being as free spirited about it as I once was. Instead of getting out and enjoying riding, I felt a need to keep myself and my animals safe. I didn’t want to experience anymore loss and needed time to heal from what I had been through. Sadly, without even realizing it was happening, this way of protecting myself and my animals turned me into a hermit. I spend a lot of time alone and that led to riding not being as fun and lonely.
I also lost my confidence as a rider. I’ve had some of the best horses in the world but fear kept me from enjoying them. I worried something would happen and my horse or myself would get hurt. I became overly focused on keeping them safe that I stopped enjoying them like I use too.
Loss of Life
My world was completely rocked again when Rumor got sick and had to be put down. It all happened so fast. One day she’s fine and the next day she’s dying from a twisted gut. This led me down a deep path of research and a need to understand how something like that can happen so quickly with no signs before hand.
Needless to say, I now know there were signs but those signs were thought to be other problems, like ulcers. Now, I look at horse behavior and body problems a little different. Losing her though, was a heart ache I can’t even explain. She was the horse that helped me accomplish my goals, she was my protector when out trail riding, she was the one that would come running when I called, she was my best friend and the pony I had so much fun riding.
After her passing, I bought a new horse named Freya and had big plans to make her my next trail partner. Unfortunately, those plans got side tracked when I realized she had back problems. I don’t want to get too side tracked here, so let me just say, losing Rumor then dealing with horse health problems, kept taking it’s toll on my mental health and added to the constant worry feeling.
Then in early 2024, death came knocking at the door again. Te’s health was declining and the decision had to be made to do what was best for him. He was laid to rest in February of that year. Then in May of that year, we unexpectedly lost our dog Whiskey. What was suppose to be a diagnosis he would recover from (but that didn’t sit right in my gut) ended up being the start of a week long process of his body shutting down and him dying. It brings tears to my eyes even now and causes that deep ache in my heart just saying his name.
All the loss over the years was a lot to process and handle. Like I said before, all the loss took its toll on me mentally and honestly physically too. Eventually, I’ll share that because I learned so much about my body over the last year; and, I want to share what I learned, what I tried, and how I healed the problems I had. What I learned during this year long process came as a total shock!
Anyway, at this point in time, I feel like I have some stuff to share and will give the blog one more year before I make a final decision on what to do about it. It’s too expensive for me to keep it up and running unless I’m able to create an income from it. None of us want to work for free and I’m no exception to the rule. I love sharing information I find out but I can’t keep doing it at a great cost to myself without recouping a minimum of what I put into this site.
To my followers that have been here from the beginning, thank you for sticking around with me this long! I hope the content I do share is helping you take better care of your horses and I hope you’ll stick around a while longer…maybe even support the blog through the affiliate links I’ll be posting. 😉
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