Still Raining

 It's been some weather. For once in my life I'm grateful to not be in a more traditionally horsey flat agricultural area. I feel so sorry for the Fraser Valley and Washington State, I can barely watch that news coverage with all the poor farm animals trapped or drowning. 

We aren't doing badly here. We got the edge of some of those recent storms rather than all direct hits, plus our little place is up above a big lake on one side and the ocean on the other so the water has somewhere else to go. While we are definitely very waterlogged and have some tree branches to clean up, but it's not so bad compared to many.  I suspect without the recent property upgrades and ring install we'd have standing water and basement flooding right now. It's wild that not so long ago we were worried about drought and forest fires.

"Excuse me? Can we come back in now?"

The ponies are stir crazy, but also don't really want to go out in the awful weather. So I've just been giving them a free pass on staying in and have been buying bedding pellets in bulk. Sophie's the only one who still goes outside for any length of time. The boys are quite happy to create a disaster zone and fill up their house with urine and manure. The most I can do is room service twice daily and I'm all twitchy about how gross it still gets. I've been kind of spoiled with neat horses. The boys don't make a mess of their stall if the weather is reasonable, but if it's really raining Buck in particular is very quick to let the standards slip. They are 2 year olds and really want to play but also the outdoors is apparently lava right now so they basically have cage matches inside all day and stir everything into one big mess :D

"Let us in please?"

"excuse me, the man cleaning my stall said I need to be out here still? I think this is a mistake? Please can you tell him?"

I've been fighting a nasty bug this past week, so with that and the weather there's been no horse training, no property upgrades, not even any hiking. I missed our equestrian club holiday get together and one with my previous coworkers. Bah humbug! Silver lining is that I have been putting in a lot of extra work hours. The contract side is busy right now, and I feel like I want to take advantage of that while I can. I'm not feeling secure enough about it to quit the day job just yet, so I'll continue to balance two jobs for the time being. It's honestly a little overwhelming and with the weather I have been questioning life choices in having three equines at home rather than just being sensible and having one leased or boarded riding horse. What if it was a hobby and not a lifestyle? While there is certainly room for improvement and change is possible, we all know nothing that drastic will occur  :)

"Pass"

"Nope"

I have a couple of weeks off my 'real' job over Christmas. I should get more time with horses and I'm really looking forward to that. It's almost 2026, and while I'm not setting any big goals or plans, it will hopefully be a big year for the cob boys (first rides? yay!) Coming ever closer to those milestones feels very exciting, especially since they've been here since they were 6 months old - they very much feel like a long term part of our lives and not just fun training/riding projects. 2025 was personally a really awful year, so I'm excited to draw an imaginary line under that and have a bunch of fun things to look forward to.

Sophie doing her rain day gallop lap

and roll. Then she goes back and hides in her house. It's kind of cute

If I don't check in before the new year, I hope everyone is able to have a little time spent doing what makes you happy.