Nigel: Weight Gain Month Five

With everything that's been going on with my personal life (and dog training omg that's out of control doing well!), I haven't been doing as much with the horses as I was hoping.  Luckily/unfortunately its also been raining enough to be irritating anyways so that's all on hold as well.

I'm really THIS close to buying the rest of the land around us and building an indoor. Or buying one of the local places that's for sale just so I can have a business AND an indoor.  But that all seems hasty and I'm slothlike when making these types of decisions.  Plus I'm still freaked out that I have money to do that with.

So anyways, Nigel's an easy topic so here we go.  He's been nomming the crud out of a round bale of hay almost nonstop since February.  Its working great and after his last bag of Nutrena Boost I didn't get a new one.  I feel like he's looking amazing and needs to start work here shortly.  The idea of letting a trainer fast track him for me sounds tempting given my current situation but I'm nervous as I've never had anyone else train my guys ever and I have a huge mental log of horror stories from other people (Arthur for one...)

But here are Month Five pictures and he looks great.

Have You Ever Won The Lottery?

Do you believe in weird twists of fate?

I don't and no, I don't play the lottery.  The answer in my life has always been to work your ass off and hopefully you will get ahead.  If not, work your ass off in a different angle for the problem and just keep chipping away at that.  After you've exhausted all angles and are or are not ahead, you make a Plan Z and get on with things

I consider our household fairly normal by American standards.  We have a reasonable (ok higher than it should be but manageable) amount of debt, I have expensive hobbies but I try to do everything on the cheap when I can and save the money for things you can't short cut.  I'm cunning, I'm clever, I make it all work.  I have a plan that everything will be paid off by 2019 except the house.  That includes the existing debt plus a new horse trailer (if I want) and a new truck for hubby (if he wants) and a few other farm related things to make life easier.  It was an easy but well thought out plan and all I had to do in the meantime was work on me, work on my horses, work on school, and well, work.

Its not magical, its not mythical, its going to be doable and I'm going to make it happen.

But then that all changed this year.  March specifically.

I'm not sure what I did to become this fortunate but I have.  Maybe all that hard work and do or die effort has paid off, maybe I really might be lucky in this ONE time of my life where all that struggle pays off.  Maybe my grandmother is just amazing in more ways than I know? 

So backing up, my grandmother passed right after Christmas.  I'm so familiar with death and this wasn't a super big surprise so we did our family thing and moved on.  My mom called me a few weeks later to say that I was in the will and I'd be getting some money but not to get excited.  I shrugged because the information she gave me was vague and I'm thinking $500-5000.  When I got it, I'd deal with it and I was just flattered/shocked/slightly guilty to be benefiting from her death.

Now its March and my Mom tells me the money is coming this week.  I'm like ok, cool.  She says some other cryptic things but no actual amount so I'm like neat.  Thanks Oma!  I don't recall where I was when she called with the actual amount, but my jaw dropped.  I was definitely in shock.  The next day, the money was in my account and I... had no idea how to cope with this amount.  No, I won't say how much exactly but we're talking life alteringly huge amount.

I struggled back to my office and sat down dazed.  And then I paid off all the credit cards.  Like boom.  The idea that I didn't have to work ever again crossed my mind.  I just... sat.  There are no words for when this happens, especially when you're as insane about working to get ahead as I am and used to being beaten down by life and picking yourself up again to laugh/cry and try again.  When someone has handed you a golden ticket its hard to take it when the moment comes.  But I've got a golden ticket.

And my five year plan was paid off in a week.  I don't know what to do from here but I'll figure it out.  I always do. 

Thanks Oma, with all my heart and soul, thanks for taking care of us always.

New 2+1 trailer after I sold my other one.  No words.

Rain Rain Go Away

I know most of my posts since basically October have included something about rain but seriously, its out of control here. I'd say its because I had goals, budgets, and plans to better myself and my riding but apparently its just a freak of nature that Texas is now basically Seattle.

I'm not impressed.

Our house is on the backside of a hill so we don't keep water for long, but it still roars through the property and that makes the ground surprisingly slick as the grass can slip right off the dirt when you're working horses, hence our being basically grounded.  The nearby indoor is awesome but there's no lunging allowed nor ground work so yeah.  The other places I know of aren't indoor and most are flooded worse that we get.

*more more sigh

Change of Plans

Nothing in my life ever stays constant.  Well, work, family, and that does but with my animals, it has never stayed constant.  I decided years ago it was because I was a flake and had no focus, but that's actually not the reason.  I'm brutally logical and stick to my plan normally way longer than I should.  I don't get in over my head and I'm quick to call a spade a spade.  I work hard, make calculating decisions, and manage my time super efficiently.

Part of all this was knowing that I was going to grad school this summer and I knew something had to give.  After evaluating everything in my life, I decided to let my dog training business go.  I loved my clients but most were coming to me as a security blanket with no real plans to continue on with their showing/goals.  Basically they had tapped out and were too sweet/loyal to stop coming.  So I told them all as of Jan 1, 2015 I was no longer training them so I could work on grad school and my own dogs.  Everyone weaned off nicely before the end of the year and so I left it at that.

As I worked on shutting my website down to the bare minimum, I decided to leave a newer sport up called Barn Hunt.  Its a really cool sport that the dogs find hidden rats (secure in PVC tubes) in a straw obstacle course.  The sport is really, really new but its fun for me to teach as it draws on my SARK9 and other K9 scent work knowledge.  Now in 2014 I couldn't PAY people to take these classes with me so it seemed like a good bet that I'd have no takers so I left it on the site.

Jan 5, 2015 I was contacted about doing some training for Barn Hunt and I thought..  sure, whatever.  We started and my business has grow by leaps and bounds based off this one sport!  Now we're hitting shows, working on becoming a judge, and even heading up the biggest dog show in Texas' new Barn Hunt event.  I'm... not sure how this all happened but for the first time in my life something I'm working on is EASY.  Its hard to ignore that and while I'm tired, its so fun to introduce people to the sport and get out.

So for now, that's what we're working on and I'm riding when I can  (I do have two working students but its just constantly wet out here right now so riding is hard to come by).  I still need to get my horse numbers down plus I have a few dogs available to good homes when the right ones come to hopefully streamline that stuff but we'll see.  I (finally) bred a litter of Aussies I've been wanting to do for years and the people on my waiting list are super happy.  Hopefully I can use that money to hit this big show and get a return on that investment.  At some point something will bleed over into the horses and it'll be good to go!

The view from the farm.