Time for Change

Time for Change

It has been a tumultuous time for us at our stables.

The first thing that happened is that our barn manager, Cookie, turned in her 30-day notice.  Honestly, she was the best barn manager I have ever had.  Before her, we experienced a lot of managers at a lot of stables, and they were never as professional and competent as Cookie.  Some had a lot of knowledge but were difficult to work with.  Others were easy to work with, but they weren't as knowledgeable.  Cookie had it all.  She was especially good when you had a sick or older horse--and we have had our share of that, too.  Her retirement was a big blow.

We were going to take a "wait and see" approach with the new management.  The stables's owner's were responsible for choosing it.  The barn owner was far too elderly to do it himself.  His son helps him, but he couldn't do everything that was needed.  They needed someone to help.

As we waited for word on that, they decided to raise the board, considerably--before they had a plan in place.  We felt we could no longer wait to see what happened and decided to leave before everyone else did and we couldn't find a place to go.

Within a few hours of reading the notice, we were checking out the stables that Shari keeps Bella.  They had 3 empty stalls and after working out some of the details, we felt we would be happy there.  We will move at the end of the month.

After about 20 years at the old stables, it will be a hard adjustment.  The new place is full care, which is a huge change.  It will be so odd to not be cleaning stalls and buckets.  It will be lovely to not worry about getting things repaired.  I won't be feeding 3 nights a week, so we will have more time and flexibility.  This all means that we can spend more time just with our horses.

We will miss our barn cat friends.

We won't be missing our fellow boarders any more than if we stayed there.  Most of them have decided to leave, too.

And, we always have our horses--and the new place is right down the street.  We will have the very same trails, too.

A new era begins...