04/01/2026
Throw hay at them and run 🤪
Welcome to hibernation season. Everything has frozen — the ground, the water troughs, my fingers, my soul… and most importantly, my will to live. Sorry. I mean my will to ride. Same thing, really.
This is the magical time of year when the horses look like a feral yaks, the arena turns into a textured ice cube, and every horse person collectively decides that “winter conditioning” actually means “emotionally coping until spring.”
Visits to the yard start out with joyful optimism — like, this is it, we’re going to be productive today. And then I step outside, get hit with winds that feel like they’ve been weaponized, and immediately rethink every life decision that led me here. Half due to the weather and half due to watching the horses complete an ambitious combination of ice skating and handstands/cartwheels across their fields.
The universe is against me.
�No riding. No training progress. Only ice. And rugs. And existential dread.
It’s only been a week — ONE WEEK — and I’ve already entered what I am calling enforced downtime. This is the time where your horse becomes a field ornament with opinions, and you develop a personality based entirely around weather apps and complaining.
I had hoped by 3pm everything would have defrosted. Spoiler - it had not. The ground crunched, I stubbed my toe doing the good old kick test of the sandschool surface and I immediately retreat into my 17 layers of coat like a disappointed turtle.
So for now, we are… bonding. Loosely defined. I’m handing out carrots and avoiding hooves and teeth aimed in my direction by half a tonne of fluffy bad decision that is also fed up of being frozen.
It hasn’t even been that long — just a week — but it already feels like winter personally targeted me.
Welcome to hibernation season.
Everything has frozen.
Including my will to ride.
But trust me — the second my sandschool thaws?
We are doing… at least… one trot lap. After lunging first.
Maybe two.
We’ll see how ambitious I feel.
