it's been a very depressing and frustrating week.
No, no, not Crispin. He is the same good little pony he always is. He's not so happy with himself right now because he's teething again but besides that he's alright.
No, it's the barn. Ina told me last week that they are closing the "Offenstall" down! *ugh* The "Offenstall" will be closed down after the winter (feb./mar.) and box stalls will be put up instead. Of course we are all welcome to stay and put our horses into one of the new stalls but right now I'm pretty sure that a box stall is no option for Crispin yet. The problem is, that this is pretty much leaving me with no option at all.
There are plenty of barns around who have decent box stalls but there are next to none that offer decent 24/7 turnout the way I need and want it.
The last week we spend looking up adresses and checking out barns and so far: NOTHING, one barn is worse than the next. Very frustrating!
Today we will be looking at some more barns but I do doubt that any of them will fit our needs even remotely.
Abonnieren
Kommentare zum Post (Atom)
before i even brought my horse here i was prepared for a difficult search for an offenstall. then the search began (in wuppertal) and my goodness i was right! if i'm correct, the definition of offenstall is a shelter and a field or large paddock and the horse always has the choice of being inside or out. i believe this idea is becoming more popular here, but still hard to find. it took me running into an endurance rider to find it, endurance riders do not stall their horses (at least none i know do). and since there are only like 2 endurance riders in all of wuppertal i was pretty lucky!
AntwortenLöschenwe had to build a weidezelt and heuraufe, and pay for them too, but my horse was in. thankfully only 6 months later we found out own place, and thankfully we got most of our money back.
i had no idea it was also difficult in your area - you live in horse country! how frustrating for you that they just discontinued the offenstall they had.
i see a mental fight going on: 1) the german winters are so rough it's hard for them to imagine horses can be ok outside a warm barn and 2) modern knowledge says natural living is healthier for horses, and they can handle cold better than heat. but i have never seen a winter like last winter - we had 3 entire months of snowcover. i had to shovel my way to the barn almost every single morning! my horse started to go crazy from boredom (he killed a tree with his teeth). we live in some sort of "snow hole" - we had more snow than neighboring cities - we'd drive 10 minutes and suddenly we'd see green again. let's hope this year is better.
~lytha
p.s. so nice that you blog in english, i don't think i could read your blog otherwise.