1. Strip stalls - This is never fun. You're throwing yourself into ankle deep pony excrement. You might as well open a bottle of ammonia in your car in the summer with the windows up and let the gagging ensue. The best part is, the pony is frolicking in straight mud, and by frolicking I mean rolling. A lot. So you're doing all this work, only to have to do more work when you're done. Then, the next day, those stinkin' ponies will have pooed again! The nerve.
2. Clean Tack - I've got good intentions almost every day to clean tack. When I stop thinking it needs to be done, you know we've got problems. But good intentions never a bridle cleaned. So many things sound more appealing than cleaning tack though! Riding, talking, sitting in my camp chair letting flies poop on me, browsing for spurs on my EBay ap in that same camping chair, and heck, even cleaning stalls. This week I'll have so much time to browse EBay I'll know every piece of horse equipment on there and when the bidding ends. The weather will be cool and the time will be endless. (I'm sure there are other things that might magically be able to capture my attention and make me forget all about tack cleaning...)
3. Grooming - Time to use both curry combs, all three soft brushes, hoof lotion and oil, thrush buster, clippers, Cowboy Magic, and fly spray. And then after all that immobilize the horses in the middle of their stalls and insert a feeding tube, catheter and colostomy bag so they stay beautiful...
4. Practicing Braiding - The first step here will actually be to LEARN the braiding. But with a whole week (ahem, RIGHT Mr. Weatherman?) of rain surely I'll have some time to perfect my newly acquired skill!
5. Pulling Manes - Right along side braiding, I'll need to do some mane pulling. Panda's mane is going Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on me. It used to lie all on one side but I'll show up and it's split right down the middle and the next day just the tip top is peeking over the wrong side. I did kind of a quick hack job when he first arrived to get him looking the part of new eventer in training anyway. It's got to be fixed!
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| Panda's mane. Mainly behaving today. |
6. Organizing the Tack Trunk - The other day I was asked if someone could borrow my hoof pick. I wound up explaining where it was like this, "It's in the red tack trunk under my saddle. Not the off red trunk, but the other one. I'm pretty sure it's not in the black one. When you go in there it's probably under the 2 baby pads, next to the hoof polish. If it's not there, dig down about 2 more inches and it'll be in between the 6 broken pairs of bell boots and the dried out set of reins I'm terrified to use." Don't ask why I've got broken equipment. You never know... I may have a slight hoarder mentality.
7. Planning out the Next Few Months of Training - I need to take a quick peek into my 101 Exercises books and sit down with a piece of paper and pen (or an excel spread sheet) and figure out who needs what exercise the most. I need to figure out who I'm riding on what day. I really need to analyze how much time I truly have each day and what is a plausible amount of time to spend at the barn (all day is not an option at this point no matter how tempting it sounds). There are things at home that just need to get done. Like my mom always used to say, "The floor doesn't sweep itself!" Unfortunately that wasn't just a ploy to get me to do my chores, it's actually true.
That's a halfway decent list to start on. I'm sure each person can add a bit to this list but for now, those are my basics and also my must-dos. Hopefully with a little more time on my hands my house might get a little cleaning too!
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