#8 To Have or Not To Have


#8         To   Have, Or Not To Have




I   have never been fortunate enough to own my own horse or pony. I would imagine that there are many people out there that can identify with this, but based on my experience, not as many as you might think.

By the time I got to working age, and had to start being a more ‘adulty’ adult, the prospect of ever being a horse owner began to escape me. Studying took over, work took over, boys took over. Some of you might be reading this and thinking that, clearly, I didn’t want it enough then. 

 You  might be right.

Every single person I had previously become friends with through horses had gone out and got at least one of their own. And I just didn’t get it. 

 How the hell can they afford that? I’d think to myself.

 How the f*ck do they pay for their car, their mortgage, their bills, their holidays? How on earth do they afford a 4 wheel drive with a trailer? Livery? Shoes? Feed? Insurance? Vet fees? Tack? Lessons? Entry fees? Who can be arsed to get up at that time before work every single day and annoy their partners to death having to slash a nice day out in half to go back to the yard? Again? The list goes on.

To be honest, I still don’t understand it. Not from the perspective of not wanting it - hell no. 

 But from the perspective of feeling I'm not able to. I have two jobs. I’m a fully qualified A level English teacher, and I’m a freelance writer. I do both on a part-time basis because it got to a point a couple of years ago that the pressures of teaching became so much, that I knew I couldn’t carry on the way I was – not if I wanted to continue doing justice to my students. I couldn’t afford to cut my hours, but as they say, 'we’re here for a good time, not for a long time' and we should work to live – not the other way around. So, I slashed my hours, which allowed me to pursue my second career of writing this year, in addition to my first.

In the interim of having one and two jobs, when I was still a teacher only on reduced hours, I began to give more thought to taking back my life from the clutches of PAYE employment.

All of a sudden, the adverts I saw for horses needing full or part-loan owners became a viable prospect. Maybe this kind of thing would let me see whether buying one of my very own was within the realms of reality.

With the encouragement of my husband, and a suggestion from a friend, the possibility of getting my equestrian life back after an 11 year horsey drought returned. 

 And with that, came my first meeting with the beautiful Flora.



#horsebloggers
#hay-net
 

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