I got up early this morning, went out to the stable intending to ride, but just decided to turn Kip out, clean and feed in preparation for tonight, and go home. The bloody shoot was setting up, getting ready to blast the hell out of the pasture by the arena, the roads were covered in slippery frost, and it was just too damn cold.
Plus, working Kip is becoming a chore rather than a joy. We are just not suited to each other, and as much as I celebrate every step forward that he takes, neither of us are having fun together. He needs a strong, gung-ho rider that won’t let him slack. I need a more forward, sensitive horse that I can be more still on, as I’ve always found it much easier to ride a hot horse that you need to just gently say “come back, come back, settle down a bit, like this” to, rather than one that you have to be Arnold Schwartzenegger to get anything out of. Plus, there’s the question of time: at four years and 17.1 or 17.2 or whatever he is, he needs a LOT of maturing time. Being a Cleveland Bay, he’ll still grow for another two or three years, and he needs to take things slow right now. I’m not exactly sixteen anymore, and there are things that I want to do now. I want to continue with jumping and dressage lessons, and hopefully event for a few years while I can still bounce, falls being something that you have to accept. I want to show this summer, and not next summer or the one after that. Plus, I’m working a job that is literally eating me alive, and the only reason that it is worth it is because I do have the extra money for horses and lessons…but it is becoming increasingly not worth the sacrifice.
I’ll give it a month, and then decide about selling him. If I do sell him, I’ll probably advertise him (given his looks and movement and overall potential) at £4500 or so, which should allow me to get a decent allrounder who is older and has competed. Kip’s going to be a star for someone…I just don’t think that someone is going to be me.
Yesterday I splurged on a stack of books, one of which was Eragon by Christopher Paolini. I really, really like this – he is going to mature into a wonderful writer. He started the book when he was fifteen, and is now nineteen, which I would imagine makes any writer who has been struggling all their lives want to cry. It is a fantasy book along the lines of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern novels, or Mercedes Lackey.
And now to work…as I always intend to do each weekend, and never do. Kip’s not the only slacker in the family. :)