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InventoryJune 11, 2010 One of the pressing tasks on my to-do list has been "horse inventory": sort through my horse stuff and decide what to keep, what to sell, and what to toss. Today I finally got around to it. It's a little weird. The space in my life formerly occupied by horses closed up almost as soon as Allie left. Maybe I'm in denial? Maybe not. Since last fall at least, and probably longer, that space was being held open by my daily routine: whether I rode or not (and I usually didn't), I spent at least an hour at the barn every day doing evening chores. Once that structure was removed, life filled in the gap. Scoop a cupful of water out of a pond and an instant later the lack is invisible. Stuff, however, takes up space. It doesn't disappear just because I'm not looking at it. This particular stuff was taking up space in someone else's barn. Horse stuff takes up more space than dog stuff or people stuff -- not surprising, since Allie outweighed me by about 800 pounds and Travvy by 78 pounds more than that. More to the point, most of it is now of no use to me but might well be of use to other people. I did horses about as frugally as horses can be done, but I still accumulated plenty of stuff that I didn't really need and rarely used. Horses generally come equipped with all the wardrobe they need, but you wouldn't be able to deduce this from current horsekeeping practices on Martha's Vineyard. As soon as the temperature goes below about 45 degrees, the blankets go on. If the horses are clipped, the blankets go on sooner. Clipped horses get less sweaty when ridden hard and take less time to cool out. I never clipped Allie. If I didn't have a lot of time to cool her out, then I didn't ride hard enough to sweat her up. To me this is common sense, but it's become less and less common on Martha's Vineyard over the 11+ years I was involved with horses here. We won't go into the people who clip their horses because they ride all winter in heated indoor arenas. Short version is that my horse inventory includes a blanket, a rain sheet, a fleece cooler, and a fly sheet. The blanket Allie wore at most 10 days a year; this past winter she wore it once, and probably didn't need it then. The other stuff she wore much less, the fly sheet not at all. She had a regular sheet but she never wore that either so I turned it into Travvy's crate bed. He's chewed one of the straps off but other than that it's holding up pretty well. Allie's saddle pads, however, got plenty of use. I've worn out a few over the years. Travvy's been using one for his "go to place" mat. I'm keeping the white monogrammed one I won as a year-end award almost 10 years ago -- Trav will probably get that one too -- but the rest are for sale. Ditto the miscellaneous training equipment that I used more often when Allie was younger but hardly at all in the last 7 or 8 years. None of this stuff is priced at more than $10 or $20. My only pricier horse possessions are my saddle, which I got used for $900 and will sell for $400, and my bridle, which I bought with the gift certificate Jay McG. gave me for helping looking after his wife Joan's ponies after Joan was killed in a (horse-)driving accident in her own pasture in November 2006. It's a nice bridle, far nicer than the one it replaced, and I thought of keeping it for sentimental reasons -- but I'm not sentimental enough to watch a good bridle mold away in my closet. So it's for sale too: $85. I'd almost forgotten the never-used leather halter I bought at Campbell & Douglas (which closed for good last winter); right after I bought it, Barbara D. gave me the nearly new halter she'd bought for her Arab mare, Muffy, who died of colic not long afterward. That's the halter that Allie wore to her new/old home. I didn't have much to throw out. Various lotions, potions, brushes, etc., I bequeathed to my barnmates; whatever they don't want, I'll chuck. I'm keeping my riding helmet and my spurs -- I still enjoy riding, and won't turn down a chance to ride someone else's horse. My grooming kit bag is a handy item; if I clean it up, it might do as a carry-all for Travvy's go-to-trial stuff. It has pockets to tuck small items into, the items that tend to slip to the bottom of the big canvas bag we're using now. I'm keeping Allie's shampoo to wash my own hair. It's much better stuff than I buy for myself.
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