Thaw, mud and poop

The snow is thawing and melting around town.  I expected lots of mud at the stable and indeed that's what I found.  I loaded up several wheel barrows of manure from Willy's pen.  There are two other horses in there with him so I don't feel like I should muck the whole thing as part of my lease when I'm only leasing the one horse...honestly I was never told by Susan that I am required to muck his stall, only to clean up after him in the arenas and wash rack area, I've just done it to be nice and help out a little.  There is a lot of gray area when it comes to the mucking.  Some of the lessers have mucked at times and other times they haven't.  It's really bad when it seems like there hasn't been any mucking in a couple of days...I don't think that a lesser should be required to do all of that when Susan and her "gang" have slacked off in the chores.  Granted if it was my own horse no question, I would leave a dry stall!  Most stables I have looked at online have the full care option for boarding and since I live in town it only makes sense to fork over the money but I would expect the stall to be kept much better than these stalls are and I would still do some mucking to keep it in tip top shape.  These stalls often don't seem to be mucked regularly and multiple loads of manure is a decent contribution to something I'm not required to do in my lease.  I'm going on a  rant but I just don't like this gray area.  I feel I pay good money for the priveledge of leasing Willy but he's also not my horse.  I'll do some mucking when the area is pretty bad but I feel that Susan should be able to either hire someone to clean stalls with all the horses she leases out for riding and I feel she has the responsibility to muck the stalls daily.  Okay I'm done.



So it was pretty muddy today and after mucking some of the worse areas of the pen I got Willy out and tacked him up.  I worked in the big arena.  Willy seemed a bit lazy today, it was hard to get him to keep trotting or cantering.  I worked on his off side with circling since he's a little stiffer that way.  It's hard doing the circles on the slopy arena since Willy plunks along going downhill and has a nicer more lifted walk or trot going uphill.  I worked on his head carriage more often today and he seemed to comply quite well, lowering his head.

After riding a bit I dismounted and grabbed a wheel barrow to get the two piles Willy left.  I also picked up about 8 other piles that had been left from who knows when.  One pile would have been the 9th but it was frozen to the ground!  I definitely do my share and more of cleaning up this farm.  It seems like a lot of the kids from Saturday or whenever don't care and then Susan doesn't do any maintenance herself.  Oh ranting about poop what fun!

Fuzzy mini horse legs!



I untacked Willy, returned him to his cleaner pen and then said hello to the little horses with carrots.  Willy got his share as well.  Hopefully next Sunday will be less muddy and all the horse stalls will have been cleaned out a little better.  My standards are a little higher I guess but I'm torn when it's not my horse and I'm paying money to lease them.  Cleaning up after Willy is one thing, mucking his stall that he shares with two other horses that looks like it hasn't been mucked in several days is another!  Okay, I'm done complaining!