On Your Marks, Get Set, Freak Out.

My pre-college return freakout/organizing madness.

I will admit, I probably have some undiagnosed slight OCD. I love to organize, and organize what I've organized. I love charts, filing, neat computer documents of my horse's information, and keeping track of lists and things I need to prep before I bring the horses back to Randolph Center for the school year. There's hay, bedding and grain to buy and transport, paddocks to manicure, stalls to tidy and put dutch doors on (FINALLY!), blankets to get bagged and stored, a tack room to clean and get ready for new boarders, and probably a thousand other things. I'm the student manager of the co-op barn facility at my college, and part of my job is making sure that things are ready for when students bring their horses in.

This coming Saturday I'll be down at the barn the entire day. It's only an hour's drive south from where I live, but I'm leaving early so Donnie and I can get a jump start on the clean-up. Donnie is the 50-something year old man who lives in the apartment attached to the barn. He's a retired dairy farmer who now works for the state, and he's known the owner of the VTC farm for a long time. He takes care of the 3 ex-racers (Standardbreds) that live at the co-op barn, and has become like a second father to me. I never thought one of my best friends from college would be my dad's age, but Donnie is a crazy-cool guy. He's one of those Jack-of-All-Trades x1000; he saves every piece of scrap anything and will use it to make something useful. The two of us basically re-worked the co-op barn from the ground up: a finished, working tack room, grain bins, organized storage spaces, shelving, blanket racks, matted stalls, a hay storage stall. We've still got dirt floors and plenty of cobwebs, but hey, we love our barn to pieces. I'm planning on taking some pictures to show y'all how awesome we are. :)

Anyway...(sorry, I get wicked distracted sometimes!)

I'm a bit of a worrywart. It's unfortunate, but it can also be a good trait because it keeps me focused on what's important. Right now we're talking financial dealings. Summer is when I stack my bank account and put away money to support Ernie and Stella for the school year. I got COMPLETELY screwed this summer when it comes to jobs. I started off not getting hired back to the farmer's market I've been working at for almost 3 years. Jobless, I was desperate to find something, and got hired to work for Chittenden County Kirby (yeah, the vacuum) as a dealer. Basically that meant either A) doing in-home demos and trying to convince people to buy a $2000 vacuum, or B) riding around on a van all day with other dealers, knocking doors, getting rejected a lot, all with the same goal in mind. I was there for almost a month and never sold one damn Kirby. I talked to the boss, and he put me in telemarketing, making cold calls and calls off of referrals. That sucked; I have so much empathy for telemarketers now. I'd about had enough, and then I got a call from Wanda, my old boss and good friend, asking me if I wanted a full-ish time job as a barn hand at a 40 horse show barn about 15 minutes from my house. I jumped and said yes, and started there around mid-June.

Well, it's been great in terms of work. I'm doing what I love, I get to have my early mornings taking care of horses, and though I've experience more drama here than any other barn (which we won't go into, because it's stupid and really very immature) I do enjoy being there. I get paid well, but unfortunately it was a little too late to really build a solid cash cushion, and with all of my horsey setbacks this summer (Stella's injury, combined with the vet bill for spring shots and Ernie's teeth, cost me almost $900. I'm also in the middle of suing the guy I started out boarding with for refused to pay me the $300 he owes me for training his 3 year old Trakehner...lucrative? Maybe, but it's more based on principle than anything else) I'm pretty much working with what's in my bank account now.

Last year, at this time, I had over $3000 in a savings account, which combined with my pay for working various jobs at school got me through the year no problem. Right now, I have none of that. I have to buy almost a thousand dollars worth of hay in two weeks, and I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do it. I am so, so grateful for the help my parents are always willing to give me. We sat down and talked financial aid last night, and of course the horses came up. I've always been firm on the fact that these are MY animals, therefore MY responsibility. I took on two horses knowing the financial burden they'd be, and I HATE having to ask for help paying for their care. However, my dad insists that they help in whatever way they can; he's always said that, and I always cry a little bit during each conversation because I KNOW that if I didn't have their support, I'd be looking at getting rid of one or both horses...

Luckily, I'm not in that position. I have amazing parents who have always been their to help me when I've had to swallow my pride and ask for it. So, for now, I have to focus on getting the necessities. Here's the rundown:

HAY: Ernie and Stella usually go through about 6-7 bales a week, between the two of them. They are at school for about 36 weeks. Do the math, if you go with 7 bales to give a bit of padding, and that's about 250 bales. I'm going to buy 275 to give myself some MORE padding. The guy I buy hay from is a really great farmer, has EXCELLENT quality hay and was really helpful when I bought from him last year. I can't afford 2nd cut this year, but he's got some great 1st cut for $3.00 a bale if I pick it up (which I always do anyway). More math = about $825 for hay.

BEDDING: I have to supply my own. Because of storage limitations I have to buy bagged shavings, and it's impossible to find bagged shavings around here for less than $5 a bag. I will start off with 25 bags or so, and that'll last me a good couple months easily. I found a lumber yard a town over from where I live that sells bagged shavings for $4 a bag. Do the math...that's $100 for bedding.

GRAIN: I try to buy in bulk while I'm home. It's more expensive to buy both horse's grain in Randolph because we have the only feed store within 35 miles, so they can charge whatever they want and people buy it. Stella is on Blue Seal Hunter, and goes through about a bag every 4-5 weeks. Ernie is on Blue Seal Sentinel Senior and Hay Stretch pellets. He goes through a bag of both every 2-3 weeks. Stella's grain is around $12 a bag, Ernie's are $15 and $9, respectively. I'll buy 3 of each to start. That's $108. Yay math!

TRAILERING: I have Wanda bring them down. I could do it myself, except I have no truck or trailer to do it with. Wanda cuts me a break, and I pay for her gas to pull the trailer loaded, about $166.

SUPPLEMENTS: I have a wishlist of what I desperately wish I could AFFORD to have my horses on. Right now, both are on a joint supplement, RapidFlex, which is actually a great product. That's 40 bucks every two months. Ernie is on a calmer, Calm N' Cool, which is 25 bucks every month and a half or so and plain old MSM, which I have a ton of from when he was injured years back. I SO WISH I could put both horses on a gut supplement. I don't need an endoscopy to tell me that Ernie has ulcers. I would happily eat my nasty barn sneakers if he didn't. And Stella, with her bouts of mild colic, probably has a bit of a sensitive tummy. However, I just can't afford to do it. So, I'm going to borrow a trick from Andrea and Gogo and try the human-grade MSM and aloe vera juice and see what happens. My wallet hurts too much to do the math.

It's a hefty financial responsibility. However, I am happy when they are happy, even if my checkbook isn't. I has forced me to get creative with how I handle some horse things. I washed my own blankets this year instead of having them laundered. I took tho heavy weight ones out in the backyard and sprayed them down with a hose, scrubbed them with a car wash wand, rinsed and air dryed. The rest got tossed in the washing machine one by one, and it actually worked really well. Donnie and I figured out how to repair cracks in a couple Fortiflex buckets I'd managed to break (don't ask me HOW I did this...I don't know) so they can be used as water buckets again (no new ones needed! Yay!) I DID find a cheaper place to order my supplements the other day. I had a couple hours and decided to shop around online looking for deals, and found everything I needed at way cheaper prices. Score! I want to bite the bullet and buy Stella a bridle, but instead of spending money I don't have, I found a western split headstall on consignment for, get this, $3, and a pair of leather training reins for $7. I already had a single jointed rubber mouth loose ring snaffle for her, so my make-shift bridle cost all of 10 bucks. Some bailing twine made a nice throatlatch for it, too.

It's going to be a long year, but I'm OK with making the most of it as long as my horses stay happy and healthy.