Settled

Ponies are moved! I don't have any pictures, but I will try to make up for that tomorrow when I go out to the barn. I am so, so very excited to start riding again. I CANNOT WAIT. It's been much too long.

The horses went up on Saturday. They got a brief spa day since they looked (and are acting) like feral ponies. It was their last hot water bath for a while as the new barn doesn't have hot water...

So far I am really liking the new barn, save for a few little things, like the no hot water, the fact that there's a gate you have to get out to open and close (hate doing this when it's raining), their hay isn't very nice quality, etc. But, with that said, everyone's been super nice that I've met so far. It's weird actually being with other boarders. The barn manager is really nice and helpful. The stalls are nice, the arenas are nice, the drive is nice. So for the time being I'm happy!

I think I'm probably most excited about the multiple arenas. There's 3 barns. The upper, middle and lower. I think of the lower as the "main" barn. The upper barn is the BO's horses only I believe and there's only a couple stalls in the middle barn. The lower barn is very big with lots of boarders. Each barn has an arena. The upper barn is more like a covered round pen, the middle one has a small square arena with deep-ish dirt footing and then the lower barn has a larger arena with sand mix footing that seems pretty nice. And there's an outdoor arena that we're allowed to use as long as there's no standing water in it. Yay!

Today a friend helped me move hay in to supplement the crappy barn hay. It was awful. The hay goes in the loft above each horse's stall so they can just throw it down into their stall at feeding time. The barn has 2 hay elevators, both of which are broken. So on our way, we stopped at a friends and borrowed their hay elevator. It only worked for one bale and then died. Great.

I felt so bad for my friend doing the hay, he had to toss it all up from the back of the truck, all 40 bales! (This hay should last me at least 2 to 3 months, the whole duration that I'm planning on staying there). It was a nightmare for him I'm sure, especially as I'm not very much any help in lifting 80 pound bales... and certainly not any help tossing them up into the loft. I kind of scooched them around for him but that was it.

I cleaned the stalls while he did hay. It definitely won't be too much of an issue as it didn't take me very long. The only hard part was wheeling the wheelbarrow out to dump it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to slip and die out there. There's slick rubber mats going down the first part of a hill and then you have to go back up through the manure pile and dump it in the back. Fun.

The girls seem to be settling in fine. Misty's neighbor is pretty nasty and was biting her as soon as she moved in, but it seems like they might have figured stuff out a little bit. I just hope there's no kicking through the panels separating them. Also, if this horse (it's name is Sizzle) rips Misty's last blanket I will be very upset...

Misty and Jetta are separated by one horse in between. I hope this will get their little romance to settle down. They both really like the sweet old gelding that's between them, which is good because they spend a lot of time with their heads over the panels and making eyes at each other. Mares...

I will make sure to take lots of pics tomorrow to share!