I read a rather cynical article this morning in the New York Times about New Year’s resolutions. It basically said, “we’re going to promise to give up martinis and lose weight and spend fewer hours in front of the TV, but we all know that we won’t do any of it, at least past the 2nd week in February.”

I’ll also resolve to lose weight and finish my novel and spend more time tidying the yard, but I also know that I’ll abandon those efforts sometime during the year. After all, I’m not fat, my neighbor’s yard is worse and novels never make any money.

Instead, I’ve developed a list of New Year’s Resolutions for my horses:

Belle:
The filly will learn to canter promptly without kicking at my leg.
She’ll start jumping a little bit.
She’ll learn to go out on the trail and go to small horse shows with a calm, confident demeanor.

Baleno:
We’ll finally nail a prompt, buck-free flying change.
We’ll continue working on the bend for the half-pass at the canter.
I’ll save what little money I earn to him to go to the clinic for a diagnosis of his back problem.

Volare:
Now that I’m only partially employed, I’ll have plenty of time to take Volare on trail rides and tune him up for his young students.

So there you go. It’s not a terribly ambitious list. It’s a good list. It’s a list I can actually accomplish. And that feels good. I’ll try to lose the weight and I’ll try to finish the great American novel, but I have a lot more chance at success if I stick to my horse training goals.

Well, the times, they have changed.

In the space of about 24 hours, I went from comfortably middle class and able to afford all that I needed for my four horses to nearly broke. One of several companies I write for closed down two magazines that were about 90 percent of my income. And so now I am really forced to look at my expenses. I printed out my bank statements for the last quarter, and here are some of the things I was buying that I can no longer afford:

Equine massage for Baleno: Biweekly. The justification for spending $60 every other week was that it really did help, and for the moment was also helping me avoid having to haul him up to Colorado for a full back workup (think, $$$$) He’s not been “right” for a number of months, but he’s also not lame or even off. He just can’t push. The vet said I needed further diagnostics, hence the recommendation that I haul to CSU or Littleton Equine. Five hundred miles in the trailer and several nights in a hotel.

Lessons with Nicole: This one caused the most emotional pain. I cried really hard over this.  I LOVE my lessons with Nicole. But they are not cheap. We have made tons of progress over the past three months. I guess it’s time to let that progress sink in and take a break.

Stall bedding: My horses mostly live outside together, with free access to their stalls when they want to get in out of the weather or sleep. I cut my monthly order from 20 bags to 10. It will make for a slightly thinner layer. I’ll blanket them more often.

Trips here and there with horses in the trailer: Sure, gas is cheaper that it was last summer, but my Dodge gets about 8 mpg. A trip to the woods for a trail ride is a $50 expense.

Memberships: May not seem like much, but I’m foregoing renewing USDF and USEF and opting instead for my cheaper, more financially needy GMO. I still want to belong, just on a less expensive level.

That’s all for now. I’ll let you know what else where cutting out as time goes by.

In the meantime, I’m trying to keep a very positive attitude. I know enough about economics and the laws of physics to know that what goes down, must come back up (eventually).

If you’re a professional journalist, as I am, you can’t help but feel a little dark these days. Print journalists are standing next to auto workers in the unemployment line, and I can tell you that the media gossip rags are rife with bad news these days. So it really warms my heart when I see media companies taking risks right now rather than curling up into the business-equivalent of the fetal position.

So I was pretty excited to see what the folks at Myhorse.com have come up with: http://tinyurl.com/hitchup Pretty cool, huh? And now is the time, too, since it appears that print is about as dead as network television or General Motors.

It’s a good time to be exploring new kinds of media since I’m holed up in my house reading stuff on the Internet and watching Youtube videos, not feeling much like venturing outside for a ride. I don’t even want to take my horses’ blankets off, not because I think they need them, but because I’m cold. I have to ask myself, when did I turn into a weather wimp? And, do my horses care?

This winter I’ve been less motivated to ride than perhaps any winter in the past three decades. And it hasn’t even been that cold. Maybe it’s age; maybe it’s the chronic bronchitis I’ve had for three weeks. Maybe it’s the broken finger that still hurts. Maybe it’s a severe case of seasonal affectiveness disorder. Whatever it is, I’m not too motivated to get out and ride. For once, bed looks more inviting than barn.

And yet, I feel guilty. I wonder if the horses really care that much that they don’t get ridden. After all, they’re probably just as happy to stand in the pasture digging up the little sprouts of grass from under the sleeping earth. Baleno is lazy by nature. He’s happy to graze and snooze and play herd boss. Volare loves to be groomed and fussed over, but he, too, never comes out of the barn ready to work. He likes the ritual but not the action. Belle: well, she’s a little working horse. Once I get her in the groove she’s all go… trot, trot, trot, in a steady rhythm until the end of the day. I love that about her. She looks proud of herself when she performs well and she loves the pats and the “good girls” she gets when I’m pleased with her. So maybe Belle needs to work, but the boys can have a little vacation.

So should I feel guilty about taking a few weeks off? My trainer reminds me that these guys get to stand around for 23 hours a day, so asking them to work for one isn’t too much. And asking them not to work for one hour a day probably isn’t tragic, either. Baleno hasn’t had any time off in about four years! And I have to remember that there are plenty of places in the U.S. where riding in December isn’t even an option.

It saddens me that I don’t feel like riding. I wonder if there is something wrong with me. Am I getting tired of horses? Or riding? I don’t think that’s possible, since they are somehow in my blood. My husband reminds me that when I’m in a bad mood, a little horse care, grooming and riding usually is the cure. But maybe it’s nice to sit back and let us all rejuvenate a little bit.

In any case, I think I would be forgiven for not riding when the temperature is 25 and the wind is out of the north and there are flurries in the air. After all, I’m not going to the Olympics.

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Just a quick dispatch this week as I’m immersed in the American Association of Equine Practitioners meeting. This is the biggest horse doc conference in the country (possibly the world). The sessions here are for your horse doctors to learn about the latest science and research, to share treatment ideas and to shop for the latest goodies (if you can call digital radiography machines and surgical instruments “goodies”). This is the third time I’ve come to the conference, and although some of the science is admittedly over my head, I always come away having learned a lot about my horse’s body and mind, and a lot about the dedicated men and women who care for horses around the world.

Here are a few factoids about veterinarians:
1) Animal doctors are highly respected as a profession.
2) There was a lot of napping during the four hour neurology session. My theory: These guys never stop when they’re at home, so why not snooze a little when they get away from the routine?
3) They get really excited about the tools available to them. The technology is evolving really, really fast.
4) Luckily for us clients, they don’t know as much about business as they should.
5) They are incredibly diligent about keeping up with the science (despite the rampant snoozing).

Here are a few things I’ve learned:
1) Something like 80 percent of performance horses could have gastric ulcers.
2) Things can go terribly, terribly wrong during castration.
3) Horse rescue organizations that are registered with AAEP as of Jan. 1 2009 can receive free vaccines (see the www.aaep.org website and click on the unwanted horses link).

Tomorrow, I’m learning about sarcoids (benign skin tumors) and lameness and a few other things. Look for my report next week for more details.

Phew. It was windy yesterday. It started out nice enough—mild and sunny, another late fall day of global weirding weather. But by 9:45, the wind was howling and I’m not kidding.

There’s a moment with young horses where you think: I need to do this. I need to know that my horse will or won’t bolt and spook and act stupid in bad weather. You stave yourself for the worst. You sit deep in the saddle and test your rein length. You sort out all your imagined and real fears, you cope with your anxiety.

It’s funny, this business of fear. Much of it is created in our heads and little is real. My mother, who came in from New Jersey for the holiday weekend, hates to fly—she is afraid, she says—and yet she does it. At 80 years old she went to Nicaragua to go canoeing. In the car this morning as I drove her to the airport, I could see the cloud of anxiety over her. It’s no use telling her that she’s more likely to die in her car (and in her case, that really is true—she’s a terrible driver) than in an airplane. She just can’t hear it. The imagined fears get the best of her.

Yesterday, I conquered those imagined fears: I decided to be brave and take Belle out for a short trail ride. After all, you never know when the weather’s going to turn, and one day I may be caught out somewhere when the wind starts blowing. So Kathleen (my Sunday am riding buddy) rode Volare and we headed out, intrepidly northward, into the wind.

I took lots of deep breaths. I told Kathleen a story (talking helps me keep breathing) about my mother. I asked her questions about her job… anything to keep my mind off the fact that I was riding a barely-broke horse in a windstorm. There was a plastic bag caught in a fence that caused some minor sideways motion, and Belle was wound up like a little ball about 40 percent of the time. When I relaxed, so did she.

It was a short ride—just 20 minutes—and when we got back to the farm my trainer was here ready to give me a lesson. The work in the arena was even crazierthan being out in the field. Once I got over the fact that I really had very little control of my horse, I just started laughing. I wasn’t afraid—I didn’t feel I was going to fall off. But I do think I really know what the word “careening” means now.

Fast forward (and I do mean fast!) 20 minutes and Belle is trotting along quietly, stretching into the bit, working over her back. Nicole is yelling over the wind, “That’s good for today!”

And then we went to the local café for a coffee. All intact, alive, well and proud of having conquered the wind and my fears.