Perspective

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Don't look at me with that tone! Or how expectations and presuppositions get in the way of our training

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 Most people who hear me babbling away with Aston ask me if he understands English.  Not surprising. We live in the northwestern Czech Republic and I am pretty much the only American up here that I know. I work in the Czech language, deal with errands in the Czech language, have my friendships in the Czech language, and yes, have even given police reports and testified in court in the Czech language. I am immersed in Czech anywhere between 6-14 hours daily. When I go to the stables, my happy place, to get away from regular life, naturally I speak English. It is my mother tongue, the language in which I first heard "darling," "I love you," "good job," and "no, we don't fart in public."  Aston's voice commands are (mostly) in English, and I chatter with him during our trainings in English. Surely he can tell the difference in the sounds between English and Czech, but whether he "understands" one more than the other is hard to say....
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How to make everyone at the barn love you as much as you love horses

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  Few are the fortunate who have enough time and money to keep their own horses on their own property. Most of us work hard enough to maintain our giant pooping lawnmowers that we don't have time or money for the facilities to keep them ourselves. So we pay others to do it. Yes. We know we are crazy. We are in a program. Most boarding facilities have a string of clients, all different kinds of owners from little pony clubbers to young and single professionals, to soccer moms, to retirees. Bring all those different types of people together, and you are sure to have conflict.                Especially with such an opinionated and stubborn bunch as are horse-crazy females. Most people say they hate barn drama, and try to avoid it at all costs. But I say, get ahead of the shit storm before it shits all over you. Steer into the skid, piss into the wind.  Don't know how to become the most hated, drama-causing boarder? That's why I'm here!...
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How to tell it is time to find a new barn

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 Six years, three stables. Sounds like the start of a bad porno. Or another chapter in my upcoming memoir, "This S*** is Too Stupid to Make Up." Alas, it is simply another way to describe my young horse's life.  The first two stable relationships we had ended in dysfunction and dramatic breakups. In hindsight though, I see a couple of common things that should have been warning signs a lot earlier: 1. You get an unpleasant feeling in the pit of your stomach when you are going to the barn. This may or may not be connected to something specific, in other words, you may think "Oh man, I hope _______ isn't there," or you may simply think "I don't really want to go, and I don't know why." 2. The horses are either listless and depressed, or aggressive and misbehaving. 3. The facilities (fencing, barn, outbuildings, equipment) are in disrepair and no one bothers to fix them. 4. Repairs that are made are done in such a haphazard way as to be danger...
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