Cob Jockey

For years now, I've known I would send Disco out for full training in his four year old year, once I got him to the stage that required finesse.

When it slowly became clear that Kate's move back to the Midwest would happen in the second half of his four year old year, the whole plan crystallized: there's no one else I would rather send him to for this phase of training. Kate's ability to "speak horse", her clear "boss mare" body language, her experience taking horses through the levels of Dressage, and her genuine enthusiasm for him and his career after she rode him last summer all make her the top choice by a mile. 

At home last August

Going to Kate also meant he would stay intact for now (he still earns the right to keep them through good behavior every day of his life, and that will never change). He will always be a horse first, a performance horse second, and a breeding stallion third, and I wouldn't have hesitated to collect/freeze and geld him if being a stallion held back my options on training and/or held back his options on socialization. 

Temporary solitary confinement at his new home

Not too many trainers will take on an outside stallion for full training, and even fewer (probably zero, and I don't blame them) would attempt to give that stallion a turnout buddy. Disco has always been turned out with others to this point in his life, and I didn't want full training to come with the stress of sudden and confusing loneliness for him. Kate is willing to try him with someone else after he gets settled in, and that means so much to me.

The moment he realized this is not a vacation

So, last week, at the age of four years and ten months, we packed him in the trailer and drove him 7 hours north. And it didn't come a moment too soon for my personal life, which is going to turn upside down in a very "growthy" kind of way this year - including, among other major life changes, taking the house down to the studs and living in the camper for a few months before my partner and his kids move in with me. 

It's all good things, all very intentional things, but having one less horse on my plate ended up being more of an immediate relief than I was even anticipating.

He'll be up there for at least four months, and after that, we'll play it by ear. 

Be good, buddy. 

It was January of 2009, and I was a junior in college, majoring in Equine Studies. Why? I still had no idea, except that I loved horses. My advisor, Dr. Marks, had patiently worked through it with me since before I was a freshman. The previous three years had gone something like this:

“I kind of think I might want to be a vet.”

“There’s no ‘kind of’ with being a vet. You either REALLY want to be a vet, or you don’t.”

“Oh. I guess I don’t.”

During one such repetition of this conversation in my sophomore year, she said, “You know, it’s easy to think of things you want to do - a lot of things sound good until you do them. I want you to pay attention to the things you don’t want to do. That’s going to tell us a lot more.”

A year or so later, in January of 2009, that advice changed my life.

The woman herself, on my graduation day

That weekend, much like this past one, the temperature didn’t get above 8F and a perfect storm of things led to me having to be at the barn for 13-14 hours every day for four days where everything took longer in the snow. I was too exhausted to shower or eat and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow every night.

Me in barn clothes after a similarly exhausting weekend freshman year

At some point during all that, I found myself daydreaming about my other work/study job in the IT department. I wondered what projects they were working on and what ridiculous requests the help desk had entertained since I’d last been there. I bet they’d showered in the last four days.

And I realized.

I don’t want to do this, Dr. Marks.

I don’t want to dedicate my entire life to cleaning stalls and scrubbing buckets.

I want to solve complex problems and work with awe-inspiring technology and take showers.

It hit me like a lightning bolt. I love IT. Like, I really love IT. 

Three months later, over spring break, my beloved IT department would “P2V” everything – move our servers from physical boxes to VMware virtualized ones, a technology that would change the world (literally, look it up) and my life. 

When the dust settled, one of the IT staff members dragged me into the server room and excitedly said “There’s a server moving from this box to this box RIGHT NOW and people are USING IT and no one has any idea!” His excitement was contagious, and that “I love IT” moment from a few months earlier sharply crystallized into “I want to do this VMware thing for a career.” 

16 years and 10 months after that, “that VMware thing” has taken me places I never dreamed I’d be capable of going, solving problems for the largest companies on the planet, and I got there with passion, luck, and yes, an Equine Studies degree, which I did end up finishing even though I knew it wasn’t going to be my career.

And on weekends like this last one, when my boarders can’t get to the barn to help me and I haven’t showered for four days, just like that weekend in 2009, I’m reminded that it’s okay to love horses but not make a career out of them. It’s okay to say “I don’t want to do this” – at least, not all the time, and to find a way to fit horses into your life in a way that works for you.

After all, if it wasn’t for “that VMware thing”, I wouldn’t be financially capable of owning the barn. In a roundabout way, my equine studies degree has gotten me right where I need to be with horses, and I have Dr. Marks and "What do you NOT want to do?" to thank for that.

Rhiannon's comment on my last post made me realize I need to revisit the whole "where are we going to live" thing now that the barn is purchased. Maybe the way we've worked through this will help somebody someday as they go through this on their own farm property.

Buying the farm ended up being a 2 1/2 year process from when we went under contract to when we closed. That was by design - I needed the time to get my house in town ready to sell and sold, and it was a complicated transaction in other ways too. Fortunately, the outgoing BO was in no hurry, which was great.

That gave Tim and I time to think about the house. The farm doesn't have a house on it, although it does have a stunning homesite at the top of the tallest hill for miles, overlooking hundreds of acres of farmland. The outgoing BOs needed to "intend" to build a house there to get financing, so it's septic-ready and even has 20 year old blueprints we could use if we wanted.

• We are so close to town, that farm field will definitely be a subdivision someday.
• Boarder traffic means the site is not peaceful, which is especially problematic with a reactive dog.
• It's the opposite of secluded, being exposed on the top of the hill. You can't see the barn from the street, but you'd be able to see the house from the street.
• Horses are LOUD, yo. Even living a quarter mile away from them, I hear their unrequited love screams sometimes (and no, it's never the stallion, lol). I started to think some separation would be nice.
• The crop farm next to the farm has a grain dryer and siloes right next to the home site, and it's loud enough that you can't talk at a normal volume outside when it's running September-November every year.

All the while, I was slowly falling in love with the farmhouse. Or, more accurately, the location of the farmhouse.

Both of the current owners' mothers lived in this house, I cannot take credit for the landscaping.

It's a quarter mile off the street down an easement driveway, and that plus the rolling terrain means even people who have lived here their whole lives don't know there's a house there.  

Just part of our long, long, LONG driveway. The farmhouse is right there on the left, but almost invisible thanks to the hill and trees.

It's almost fully protected from ever having neighbors, except the ones that own the rental house, who also own the 20 acres and the only other house behind the farm.

(It was all one farm at one point before being parceled off into two 20 acre tracts, and yeah, if we win the lottery, I'd love to combine them again and own it all someday. A 40 acre horse farm with a big brick colonial and a little farmhouse is a hell of a property!)

It's surrounded by incredible mature trees. 

Just a few of the mature trees in the backyard

It's Meatloaf paradise - despite being close enough to one of the local high schools to hear the announcers during football games and two minutes from Best Buy and Lowe's, the ravine, the hills, the trees, and the complete lack of traffic mean Meatloaf is the most relaxed out here she's ever been.

I've been enjoying the quarter mile walk across the hayfield to the barn. It's the perfect distance to wear my dogs out before work in the morning. 

The barn as seen from my front lawn.

My neighbors' house across the street from the farm on a misty morning. Currently the only house in that field across the street.

The house itself is nothing to write home about, but it ticks Tim and I's boxes in a few ways: 

• It exists, therefore it's cheaper than building new.
• Whole-home renovations are my comfort zone; new construction - not so much. All of my contractors from the last reno gave this one a thumbs up after inspecting it.
• It's small. We both value having "just enough" house after having big ones previously, and a house that encourages us and the kids to spend time outside. Not because it's unpleasant to be in, but because it has wonderful inside/outside spaces and because this beautiful property is just outside the door, begging to be explored.

The only problem? The owners weren't sure they wanted to sell. But after six months of getting to know me, they started to explore the idea, and as of another year after that, we are finally under contract. And it feels so right.

We closed on the farm today.

Ooooooomg.

This represents so much more than a real estate transaction. The person I was five years ago couldn't have done this - wouldn't have done this. I thought I was a lifetime boarder married to a guy who just wasn't cut out for farm life, and that was that.

But I've learned what feelings are and how to listen to them. That little voice in my head when I'm sitting on the tractor bush hogging that says "This is fun." The realization that shooting the shit with the old farmers at the feed store, and muttering "fucking horses" as I fix the latest thing they broke are actually enjoyable. I grew up on a hobby farm, and it turns out, that's who I still am.

I enjoy this.

I also couldn't have done this without the intense and sometimes painful process of learning what it means to allow people to get close to me, to let them help me, and most importantly, what it means to be deeply in love with a supportive partner that cares about me and the things that matter to me.

It's no coincidence that I didn't start the process of buying the farm until a couple years after the co-op began and until after I started dating Tim. I could not imagine owning a farm with my ex-husband, who once said "We can buy the farm, but I'm not even going to mow the lawn, it'd be all yours." 

(Joke's on him, the neighbor has mowed the lawn for years and plans to continue.)

Enjoying a beverage on the site of where we thought we would build our house after a long day working on the farm in March of 2024

 But we, together, these four ladies and Tim and I, are capable of doing so much more together than I ever could when I was my hyper-independent self. And it changes everything to have a partner who feels as much ownership of the place as I do, someone who sees me for me and loves me for me, and someone who will be shoulder-to-shoulder with me in the mud when the chips are down.

He, thankfully, loves cold weather.

Finally, it represents a lot career-wise too. Ten years ago, I was making barely more than the janitors working in IT for a county government, and I couldn't afford Connor's board without doing 8 hours of barn chores every Sunday. Over the last ten years, I've pushed myself to the very top of my industry, to leadership positions at the company that makes the software I once managed for a janitor's salary. And with a Bachelors in Equine Studies. It's definitely been some luck and some right-place-right-time over the years, but I've earned my position, and I love what I do.

Here's to the next chapter of our lives!

He makes me laugh

"Hello, is this Jenifer?"

"Yes, it is."

"Hi Jenifer, this is Dr. Tanner. I have good news: Disco doesn't need surgery!"

Did you know horses can give themselves the equivalent of a root canal? I didn't either until Dr. Tanner called the morning after Disco's CT scan.

Thought I was dropping him off for an extended stay, but I would be back the next morning, who knew

Turns out, by the time we got Disco to Rood and Riddle (5 weeks after discovering the fracture), he had laid down enough new tertiary dentin to cover the pulp canals, which meant the fractured tooth didn't need to come out.

I was, in a word, relieved. Between closing on the farm (aka paying lawyers), getting under contract on the house (more lawyers), buying a Hay Hut (no lawyers here) and cancer treatment for one of the canine members of the family (just a vet, but damn this was pricey), October has been an expensive month even before you considered Disco's dental adventures. While I haven't received the final bill yet, it should be closer to $2k than $9k, which is a win. 

Fascinating

I also felt less bad about how long it took to get him in. I first called in mid-September, and between the surgeon's schedule and my schedule, the earliest we could get him in was mid-October. While I feel bad for the pain he must have been in for at least part of that, if we had gotten him in any earlier, he might not have had time to lay down that new tertiary dentin, and I assume (I didn't ask) we might have had to do the surgery.

It does leave me with some questions - does this always happen with fractured teeth? Should I always slow roll surgery on a fractured tooth if the horse isn't in immense pain? Did I just get lucky? - but overall, I'm just relieved to put this chapter behind us, even if it hasn't meant I've gotten back on him.

But more on Disco's winter plans later.