Right now, I am sitting in the Seattle airport waiting to fly home. Open in front of me is Complementary Therapies for Horse & Rider.  It is a part of my current ESA course, Complementary Therapies.  I finished the Nutrition course, and was a little disappointed that it didn’t include any secret recipes for optimal horse health and hoof growth.  I guess we will have to keep working on every horse as an individual instead of relying on a one solution fits all recipe (like you might find in a large boarding barn).

So why am I in Seattle?  I just finished 3 days of hoof trimming with ESA field instructor Christina Cline.  Over the course of 3 days, we saw around 40 horses with laminitic, foundered, insulin resistant, cushings (IR and cushings are not always together), pasture, performance, young, teenage, old, and some healthy hooves.  It was particularly interesting to me how much different the hooves tend to grow due to the difference in environment.  While most of us in CT feed hay year round, many of the horses in WA get lush pasture (developed for dairy cows) once the spring comes around.  The result is a higher number of laminitis cases and more frequent founder for owners who do not carefully manage the weight of their horses. The pasture is just too rich.

So, it’s back to reading for me.  I am planning long term to try and learn more about things like using herbs in the diets of horses.  Maybe Anna will have to grow all the herbs we need in the garden…

As we were moving, it struck me as to how much interests change over time, and how hard it is to let go of the dream/vision that led you down that path in the first place.  For example, about 6 months ago, I finally decided to sell some of my woodworking tools because they had been sitting idle for over 2 years.  And I did sell some….  But I still have a pretty significant workshop.

And sometimes we get into crafting (like Creative Memories) or duck hunting or triathlons.  And while we are not ready to say we will never do any of those again, they don’t seem to fit in to life right now.  And it is very hard to get rid of the “things” because it seems to mean giving up on that dream.

Our horses are like that too.  We owned Cinder for 11 years, even though we knew long before he wasn’t quite the right fit.  For the past 11 months, I have been working with Calli and talking about my plans for eventing.  But the reality is, I don’t have time to train her and I don’t have time to compete.  Instead, our focus is horse activities the kids can be involved in too.  So instead of eventing, we are going to try to focus more on hunter paces later this year.  We are in a great location to get trail time and Alex really doesn’t like arena showing anyways.  And maybe Calli isn’t the right horse for those goals, so maybe we will find her a new home and find me a quieter mount to focus on the kids’ needs instead of my dreams.  I guess that is part of being a parent and growing up.

But I’m keeping the waders so I can train Mack, the golden retriever, to fetch that duck when we go hunting (some day).

The horses are loving the grass in the new pasture. I don’t think we will need to feed hay for at least a few days. It looks like we are going to buy a rotary cutter to get one pasture under control.

The horses are loving the grass in the new pasture. I don’t think we will need to feed hay for at least a few days. It looks like we are going to buy a rotary cutter to get one pasture under control.