I have a hypothesis. And it’s only a hypothesis and not a theory because I have 0 data to back this up. But bear with me.

Everyone is always looking for some version of this horse: 8-15 years old, amateur temperament, easy to ride, trained to Prix St. Georges. We’ve never, ever had enough of them to satisfy the market. But man oh man, lately it’s like… where are they?

I could sell ten Fenders a day, if I had them to sell. Sue Stickle photo.

Now to the math part, and a trip on the Wayback Machine. Remember when the bottom fell out of the economy between 2008 and 2010? Horse breeders and horse trainers were affected, just like everyone else, so breeders made fewer babies between 2009 and 2011, and fewer quality trainers could afford to give the horses born in the few years before the the right start. Great horses are made between ages 3-6; from there, even if they’re waylaid for a few years, they can still make it up the levels, but if they don’t get pressure applied in the right way, and learn how to learn in those formative years, it makes the journey up the levels really hard.

So that economic downturn would have affected horses, roughly, born between 2003 and 2011. And in 2022, those horses would be between 11 and 19 years old, particularly at the bottom of that range. 

There’s a million other factors about why good horses are so hard to find right now, and the demand for youngstock is wild too. But the trickle down effect of that economic downturn might be a factor as well (and, unfortunately, one I don’t know how to solve!)

But certainly if you’ve got the time and the funds to invest in a quality young horse and park it under someone competent to make it, now’s a heck of a good time. Well trained horses will always be marketable!

Hello from Florida. We’re here. We’re set up. We’re riding, I’m teaching, I’m occasionally running out to grab something from Target or Lowe’s or the tack shops that we forgot. I’m exercising, I’m clawing my way out of my inbox, I’m making food and walking my dogs. I’m living my life. And I’m happy and healthy and well.

But man oh man, I am not writing.

At least I’m not writing well. I’m working on three different blogs, and I’m happy with none of them. The secret to my writing success over the years has been to never have a deadline, never be assigned a subject, and hardly ever take a second pass at anything. It’s why I can’t do it for a living, by the way, because that’s a pretty poor recipe for reliable job performance. But there’s a trope I like: my approach to writing is like a fart. If I have to force it, it’s probably shit.

And here I am, forcing it. 

I’ve had three different people ask me if I was ok because I hadn’t published a blog lately. And it’s funny, because I am, truly, fine. It’s also funny because, sometimes, I do my best writing when I’m really distraught. And it’s not like I haven’t had things to be distraught about – staffing challenges, financial challenges, the normal chaos of running one’s own business. But the longer I do this, the thicker the crust I’ve built to keep these things from really making me nutsy. The awfulness of 2016-2018 for me made me tougher, for sure! That which does not kill us and all, bla bla bla. It’s not like 2020 and 2021 haven’t been horribly wretched for a whole lot of people on a whole lot of fronts. I’ve just gotten better at handling it. And as such, apparently, I’ve had less to write about.

(Yes, I recognize the scary universe-tempting that I’m doing. I lean into chaos.)

So don’t worry about me. I’m here, going about my business, living the safest life I can (get your boosters and wear a mask, ya filthy animals!), and just also writing very, very poorly. When I get my writing mojo back, you’ll know it, because these pieces have the potential to be really quite good. They’re just definitely not right now.