NEWSLETTER

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THE TROTTER-JANUARY 2022

Warmest greetings for the New Year! It is my most sincere hope that this, our inaugural newsletter for 2022, finds you all happy and healthy.

As I write this, Kathleen is putting the final touches on our new website (with a little help from Mom). Once complete, we will match our new website to our current domain. After that is complete, we should be ready to go live. As I said in a previous email, we can have a website critique session at our spring gathering and can make more changes or additions, as needed.

Unbelievably, we are beginning our second week of January, 2022. I don’t even remember how we got from summer to Christmas, this past year. However, since we are a club full of individual scheduling challenges, it is probably wise to begin the planning and scheduling of our spring gathering in earnest. Let’s get some email communication going about the “where and when” now, so we can all begin checking our calendars.

Feel free to email me anything you would like to add to the newsletter at any time. No blurb is too small or too large. I consider ALL submissions to be valuable reading material.

FROM THE BARN OF:

Sherri Jones 

Here are a couple of paragraphs about what I did in 2021:

When I look back on 2021, I think “Whew!  It was a crazy, busy and expensive year.  Why?”  Well, it was all self-induced and 100% focused on firmly establishing (and growing) my amazing little herd and taking a few steps deeper into my passion.  My 75 year old dad and 10 year old son built me a 1600 sq foot addition to my barn and 2 run in sheds.  I jumped off the deep end and purchased my first new-to-me 3 horse living quarters trailer, welcomed an adorable 16 month old gypsy vanner cross to my herd, and entered my first year of classical dressage competition with my 11 year old Morgan!

Yep…that all explains the “crazy, busy and expensive” part!  And of course, I blame and credit my very supportive family who enabled all of the above! 

It was all worth it and I don’t regret one bit of it.  Can’t wait to continue to share all of it with our amazing Alabama Morgan Horse Club members and new friends we’ll make this year!

Wishing you all the absolute best in 2022!

Julie Seeley

We are in the process of putting up a pole barn. The kit was ordered a few days before Christmas and the wait time is 22 weeks! My goal for 2022 is improving work life balance, spending more time doing fun things with my horses and with Keith, improve my baking and gardening skills and increase my garden space. That's not asking for too much, lol! 

Ingrid Jensen

As most of you know, Audrey has moved to the Boaz area (Douglas, specifically) and is in the process of turning a beautiful old cow pasture into a lovely horse farm. Her barn is up (roof) and fencing is mostly complete. There are still many things to be done but her plan is to be horse-ready at the end of January. Audrey will be taking two horses, Soprano and Silky, to live on the farm. This leaves me in a potentially dangerous situation.

King, my Haflinger is in his twenty-fifth year and slowing down. I will still drive him occasionally but he still thinks he has the stamina of a young thing and will wear himself out with his unconscious energy expenditure. When Audrey moves her horses north, she will be taking my best driving pony (Silky) with her. 

So…..because I will have a little extra space, I am TENTATIVELY looking for a very magical, most special, and super versatile, unicorn of a horse (mostly) for Kathleen. In an idyllic, bluebirds chirping, butterflies flitting, Mozart lilting in the background, world, I would like a solid driving and riding horse in the 14-ish hand range. Color is not important, nor are markings. What is important is temperament, personality, and experience. Size is important because I have multiple vehicles and multiple harness which fits cob sized horses and I would like to use what I have.

If I had to choose, I would rather have a solid driver who needs ridden work rather than the other way around. However, for the right horse (one who has the right temperament to learn driving skills) I could be swayed. I just know that I am terribly busy a lot of the time and cannot always commit to regular major training needs for a new horse. I am in NO hurry.

Lastly, and probably most laughable, is my sincere hope for affordability. Everyone please get up off the floor and stop laughing…..