The Move

Our new place is just barely below the Tennessee border in a rural area of Georgia. I don't know a soul here and it's not been a smooth move. One trip to move everything has become 5, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Before we came up this weekend, the barn ladies all came together to surprise me for a night out. I know a lot of horse folks read this and more than half of you (that I know) board your horses. You know what I do, it's MORE important the people that make up a place than the place itself. I'm not saying sacrifice safety for company, just if you're looking around at places pay close attention to who makes up the farm, not just what.

The best part of Lone Star was the people. I have made some lifelong friends and that is a real part of my heart left behind in this move. Seeing them everyday for almost a year has changed the way my life has been run since about 4 years ago when children made my world very small and close to home. I can't wait to see them on trail rides again, host them for visits, and blow up my texting plan.

The time to move was here before we knew it and chaos erupted. I'll spare you the gory details and cover the 32 hours we worked in one sentence... Moving with 5 small children and various animals is an impossible adventure.

Back down to get Whisper and Ben, I was running on empty. 5 kids in the car were OVER IT. Many tears, outbursts, yelling, and the scoreboard on all of it was tied between the children and I. Whisper is a challenge to load. My previous experiences have taught me this and I look forward to the day I own a trailer and can spend leisurely training time fixing it. For now, Whisper HAD to get on.

Loading her when you are well rested, full of energy, and otherwise ready for the full contact sport of horse trailering, is exhausting. I didn't have that on my side. I arrived from a 2 hour drive, that I fought to stay awake through, already mentally and physically spent. I fumbled just putting shipping wraps on the horses. It wasn't looking good.

Amy had the foresight to have tranquilizers on-hand and after 6 or so short attempts at me getting her on, I opted to drug her. 2 and a half (half going in my face/eyes/mouth when a needle clogged) syringes later, this was Whisper....

An hour of this went on. Most with Julie and Amy pulling, coercing, using every trick in the book, working to get her on. I took this picture sitting on the edge of another trailer watching because I simply didn't have the strength after 30 minutes.

She was completely drugged, enough that if we gave her any more she risked falling over in the trailer on the way there. Whisper would stand, head down, basically asleep, right at the edge of the trailer, then spring to life the moment she was pushed to go forward into it. Then back asleep again. At one point, I physically placed her front feet on the trailer while she dozed, only to have her fly back again awake.

I didn't know what we were going to do. The kids were crying, I was as helpful as Jell-O, and we'd already loaded a willing Ben to no avail for Whisper.

Suddenly, she just walked on. In the past when this happened, she also flew right back off. Not this time. This time she walked right on and promptly went to lala land again.

2 hours later she was here, no worse for the wear save for one cut above her eye that's already begun to heal. Ben was excited to see his new place and came out tail pricked and prancing like a fancy little Arab. Whisper saved all of her prancing, blowing, and property searching for this morning at turn-out when she was fully awake.

Waking up to the sound of my 2 horses calling for breakfast as the sun just barely broke the horizon, was heaven. Good thing too, saying good-bye to some wonderful friends was harder than I ever thought, way harder even than loading a silly gray mare.