New Year - New You!

From the January 2015 issue of The Stable Magazine – www.thestablemagazine.com/january2015

Sometimes it's easy to forget just why we have horses. It'll be that week (where things in the budget were going as planned, and you'd saved a little extra cash for Christmas) that your horse chooses to investigate the new fencing by pushing his foreleg straight through the new post and rail. Not only are we kept with our heads financially merely above water, but often, we wonder why we constantly subject ourselves to the unique form of torture that is horse ownership...

Believe it or not, we understand your plight. We’re broke too. Between vet bills, feed and supplements, agistment costs, forking out cash to the farrier, and the considerable time you spend caring for your horses (not to mention the worry and heartache attached with owning animals, regardless of their current health status) it’s little wonder we are ever seen venturing outside the house or the paddock. And.. even if we did have the time for said ventures, who has extra cash to blow on ‘non-essentials’?!

So, at the beginning of another fresh New Year, it’s time to take a look at what we call the ‘essentials’ and the ‘non-essentials’. (Yes, cleaning is definitely a non-essential. Consider this your official ‘free pass’.) Let’s make a plan for 2015 that involves the things WE want. Forget New Year’s Resolutions (they last a week, tops!) - resolve this: to make a change based on what we want and what we need.

So let’s wipe the slate clean, start fresh, insert additional unnecessary cliche` here. Let’s make 2015 a year where we can minimise our stress levels, get rid of the non-essentials, take more ‘me time’ (and not feel guilty about it!) all the while, working to our goals of a gold medal at the next World Equestrian Games. (We have four years, it’s feasible, or at least, not impossible!)

Essentials

Essentials are, for all intents and purposes, things that require your attention to thrive or exist. Everyone’s list may be slightly different, and of course, should be altered according to your own priorities... That’s what this is about. Working out your priorities, devoting time to YOUR essentials (not your partner’s!) and making a change to do things for YOU.

Our current priority list:

• Horses. (duh.)
• The necessary evil. (Working.)

    How else are you going to buy your vet a mansion?

• Small animals/other pets

   Small children may also be included in the above.

• Goals and aspirations

    Allocating time (and/or resources) to achieving your

    goals - weekly dressage lessons, clinics, shows, etc.

• Paying off loans.

   (Not fun, but better than not paying off loans.)

Non Essentials

Non-Essentials are those things that you currently invest time and/or money in that you neither enjoy, nor find any benefit in. This, as aforementioned, definitely can include house cleaning. The house probably isn’t going to fall down if the display cabinet doesn’t receive a good dusting once a month.

Inclusion of ‘spending time with your partner’ on your list of Non-Essentials is optional. It’s about being realistic about the time you have and how you should spend it. And no, we often don’t have ‘quality time’ penned in to the diary on a daily basis for a significant other, especially by the time we are already running three hours later than planned after yet another time-sucking, un-put-off-able equine related emergency activity.

So it’s really about weeding out those tasks or commitments that you don’t enjoy, or don’t benefit you, and about working to make your essentials more fruitful.

Do you really need to pay for that expensive gym membership when you could spend your excess kilojoules on manure removal or DIY projects around the agistment?

Is there a better, more efficient way to get the daily feeds done to fit in an early morning ride?

Can you save time and money by putting some cash aside and getting your season’s worth of hay delivered in one bulk lot?

Should you perhaps not have chosen to raise baby dairy goats as cross grazers for the paddock when both end up ill and cost in excess of $1000 in vet bills, while at the same time completely decimating a suburban backyard because they suffer separation anxiety each time you attempt to leave them at said paddock? (Probably a bad move.)

So really - the horses being on the Essentials List really means they’re not going anywhere, so either is the stress and worry associated with being a horse owner. Perhaps a downsize might be in order if your collection of hooved animals is on the larger end of the scale.

Accept that you won’t change doing what you do. Who the hell knows why we persist, but most likely, if you’re reading this, you, like us, also suffer with the Equus Infection - you’ve been bitten by the horse bug. The horses and all associated priorities (late night emergencies, manure clean up, unexpected vet bills, feed runs to pick up hay from 50kms away) are not going to go away. It’s time to figure out where you can save your precious time to devote more of it to the things you want, and less on those Non-Essentials.

Accept also, that money is hard to come by, and as long as you persist with the lifestyle you’ve chosen, to some degree, you’ll always likely be a poverty-stricken horse owner... But hey, at least you can read The Stable each month for FREE, right? (Sorry, shameless plug.)

Thank you to The Stable Magazine for this article, which was originally published in their January 2015 issue. Check out The Stable Magazine online now for FREE. Read this article and many more at www.thestablemagazine.com