Thinking Ahead

 When you are completing your chores, working with your horses, or just notice something with, on, or about your property, WRITE IT DOWN.

Note changes you would like to see even if they are not feasible right now. Maybe there will be a time to make the upgrade later and then you can refer to your notes.

For instance right now one of our horses likes to push on one side of his stall to get closer to his neighboring horse. We have thought about moving him further away, or placing concrete footings to keep his stall in place, but neither is something we can do at this time.

We have created a computer document that we continue to add thoughts to whenever they come up. If and when we think of another thing we can do to fix the situation, we add it to our list. And of course a great thing about a computer document is that we can list several things and then go back and add to the first one and do things "out of order".

In addition to being a good way to think about things before you do them, it can be fun to look back over things you have listed before. Did you end up doing everything you thought about? Did you later think of better ideas? It ends up becoming a bit like a journal of your slice-of-ranch life. :-)

Enjoy What You Have!

 There are so many "versions" of ranches or ranching that it can be easy to wish for what you don't have instead of thoroughly appreciating what you have right now.

If you have one horse, you may wish you could have a second one or you may want to add a goat or a mini. You may have an acre but wish you had just a little more room for a larger arena. Maybe you don't actually have a horse yet and would love to find just the right one for you. Well, these are all great, but if you can't make the change right now you might think about learning a bit more about it. You can do research online and find an article like this one from Horse & Hound entitled "6 things you discover when you get two (or more) horses". You might read some blogs by ranchers or people with larger properties to see what challenges they face. This can give you some insight ahead of time. Especially if you think you want a different animal all together, its always a good idea to read up on it. After reading that book about how to take care of goats, you may decide that another type of animal would work better for your situation, or be more exactly what you wanted to begin with. Learn as much as you can and this will set you up for even greater success when you go to make a change.

Then when you aren't reading or researching, remember to spend lots of time with your horse (or if you don't yet have a horse, enjoy being able to spend all day with friends or at the mall and not needing to be home to feed your animal). Meet up with a friend and go on a trail ride...or a hike, or take some extra time and give your horse a long brushing or complete bath (if weather permits).

Remind yourself that when you end up adding another animal your time will be split between them. :-)