New Year resolutions

Happy New Year!

With all our bottles dry and the empty cans and bottles hidden from the neighbours under the newspapers in the recycling bin, thoughts turn to the subject of what to promise ourselves for 2010. Lose a little weight, eat a little more healthily, and maybe drink less? Ok maybe not go mad but the idea is to try to make 2010 a little different and maybe a little more auspicious. Having had our real belts literally expanded we may feel the urge to tighten the imaginary financial belt or just raise some money for those impending credit card bills, many of us are harbouring and hoarding stuff we don’t need or use any more, I don’t just mean those old school books and pictures, I don’t even mean all those awful holiday gifts made out of shells, I am referring to what we keep in our fields and stables.

Cash in the attic or tack room, while it is easy enough to sell that old trailer or lorry the unused saddles and bridles not everything is quite so easy to part with. Here on Horseworlds your unwanted items can be easily sold and those much loved but underused horses and ponies can be sent onto loving new owners. Even so; there are some family friends that are just not so easily waved out of the gate. What of our children’s beloved last pony, with all those memories of our children riding? Sure they don’t eat much but they poach the field all the same, maybe they only saw the vet for the jabs and the farrier for a trim but who picks out the feet and brushes the dreads from the tail, the children? Deep inside you know what you should do practically but you cant part with them the emotional bond is just too strong to sever. So we go on spending and caring for a pony that no-one rides, maybe they are a little headstrong to risk loaning and with all the worries of welfare that can bring who needs the anxiety. Sure we all know that healthy and fit is best for the pony but how many times can we send the pony round on the lunge before they, or us give up the will to live? So what is the solution? Am I just going to torment you into feeling even more guilty?

What if you could exercise the pony yourself while chatting to a friend on the way to the pub or shop? If you could bumble along listening to the sparkly clip clop of newly shod hooves while entertaining your companion, how many of you owners have considered turning your ridden pony into a driving pony? Maybe nowhere near enough of you! Recently we retrained a twenty year old ex- pony games 12hh mare, she had arthritis and the vet had recommended exercise, the owners had only large children and what small child wants only to walk and rarely trot on a loan pony? She is now re-schooled, drives and because of the option to be exercised her condition has improved, she isn’t cured but with the daily opportunity to stretch and build condition she appears to move more freely and with less discomfort. Maybe by turning our old family friends hands to a new task we might include them a little more into our daily lives, putting back some of that love of life with an opportunity to share time together, just like the ‘old days’.

Learning to drive isn’t anywhere as hard as riding, much older and more infirm can join in and the set up costs can be as little as the value of the sale of the old tack, I am not convinced its nerves or finance that stops most people driving, often it just never occurred but once your driving you’ll wonder why you never though of driving before. Check out Horseworlds for driving establishments in your area and make 2010 the year you and your family took up driving.

Jay