Hi, it’s me, your friendly neighborhood high-anxiety person who checks all the COVID numbers every day.
Even my tiny, best-in-the-nation state is now trending poorly again. Granted, for us, that means 28 new cases today rather than many thousands, and granted, we still haven’t had a death since July, but it’s not a good trend, is it?
Is anyone planning for a second lockdown? Revisiting best practices from the spring? Making contingency plans specifically for not being able to access your horse or your barn for some unspecified length of time?
A couple of things that I did that worked out, and that I will continue to do:
- setting up Tristan’s supplements and meds on auto-order through SmartPak; ditto his treats (without which he will not eat said supplements)
- still thrilled with his biothane halter and lead from Two Horse Tack; they’ve held up well despite being doused in disinfectant multiple times a day for months.
- I’ve really streamlined my access to the barn, mostly limiting it to certain times and really carefully knowing what I have and need in my grooming tote, etc. I can get everything I need in one trip from the tack room, and can do the same from the trunk of my car again if I need to.
- I’ll clip Tristan this weekend to get the outlines of his first clip down, something easy for the barn to follow if they need to take over
- I washed, sorted, and mended all his blankets early this year; they’re all already hanging up and waiting for him. I also sprung for some extra leg straps in case those break and put them all in an easy spot on his tack trunk
- I’ve set up and been paying board by Venmo for a few months now, and now get texts from my farrier directly with bills (the old system was to leave checks on the corkboard)
Things I know I still need to do:
- A little bit more tidying up around my tack trunk to make everything neat and clearly accessible
- A thorough evaluation and restocking of my first aid kit, which got a bit blown apart this summer and fall with Tristan’s eye fun
Anything else I’m missing? Is anyone else starting to think about this, or is my brain in pre-election overdrive?
beljoeor.com 
I live in a state with a governor who has HAD covid and still isn’t locking things down, so I don’t anticipate my daily life to change much even as we try to ride out the next 8-12 weeks, which are supposed to be BAD — still WFH, still have my horses at my house and we are set for our winter’s hay and I can do contactless pickup at my feed mill, so I don’t worry about that too much. I’m extremely grateful for all of those things, and am carefully keeping an eye on our hospital capacity statistics and may hold off riding for a while based on that. Not that I expect to get hurt riding, but anything can happen. At least now that I’ve also had covid, I am “unlikely” (whatever that means) to get it again for a few months at least, so I feel some tiny measure of comfort from that… but I’m still planning to behave like a hermit until spring. Last week I did have to go into the office to pick some things up and I stopped by our (socially distanced, masked, extremely limited seating) town hall to hear the Commissioner of our agency speak, and I had a moment of sitting there feeling like I was in some sort of dystopian novel and wondering how on earth life had gotten to this point… sigh.
At any rate, keeping those of you who board and may experience limitations to being allowed to see your horses again in my thoughts ❤ I cannot even imagine how difficult that was this spring, and knowing it may come again is so hard. internet hugs (since that's the only kind that are safe these days, apparently)
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I never really stopped from lockdown 1.0. Just when I started to think about poking my nose out again, the winter spike appeared on the horizon. Virtual hug to all who board their horses.
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Right now I’m putting off moving Mocha to the ranch where she boards as long as possible. That works for the barn owner as she’s trying to keep the load light on the main field until the first snow (it’s also the hay field) and they start feeding hay. I’m feeding hay at the field she’s in now because we’re getting hit with early snow and below-freezing temps. She’s still got some grazing there but I’m throwing hay because she’s 20 years old and is not exactly an air fern.
Hey, at least it gives me a chance to work on teaching her to come to the rattle of a grain bucket (the joys of owning a stall-born-and-raised horse. I never ever thought I’d have to teach a horse to come to grain).
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I am fortunate to have my horses at home. Although us getting ill is a worry. I don’t think things here will be in full lockdown but there may be more restrictions. Right now we’re doing well with our Atlantic bubble. But if that changes our cases will go back up.
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I do chores at my barn so I’m fortunate enough to still see my horse even in lockdown, but our whole facility never really laid off the reopening rules like soooo many around us did. We’re all still in masks, we’re still wiping everything down, we try to stay apart from each other as much as possible, and there’s still a limit on people allowed at the barn at a time–and those people have limits on how many are allowed in the ring/tack room/viewing room etc. Hopefully barns aren’t forced to shut down again because this routine has been working great for us, and my poor BM was hit so hard financially losing her lesson program for so long.
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Our state never locked down barns to boarders so I’m hopeful that will stay the same here even if things tighten back up. If not, I may bring them home this time. We’ll see. I don’t know if we’d go all the way back to where we were with lockdowns, but I have done a little prep on things like paper towels, lysol, etc just in case those get tough to find again. I think right now it just makes sense to stay organized and ready for anything. Cause who knows what can happen?
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Mainly home stuff because the horse stuff worked out fine.. but buying toilet paper, and the pantry/freezer is better stocked than this spring.
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I’m also still on lockdown 1.0: groceries are bought once a week, with half of them delivered. Still not eating at restaurants, still working out at home. My barn never shut down but the perk of incoming winter is that there are rarely people around during the middle of the day, unlike the summer when it’s crawling. So my ability to see my horse might actually go up instead.
After 4 months of relative tranquility on the Covid front, my husband’s hospital went from 2 Covid patients in the ICU to now having to open up a whole second Covid ward within the span of days. I panic-bought zinc lozenges and vitamin C (near impossible to find back in March and April) and we are stocking up on toilet paper and some of the other essentials that disappeared earlier this year. I’m honestly more afraid that there *won’t* be a lockdown 2.0. Because I don’t know how this country’s healthcare system will hold up. Especially when the president declared victory over the pandemic and started saying hospitals are making up numbers.
Also started looking at one-way plane tickets for Puerto Rico for November. If shit goes down quickly, our plan is for me to jump ship first while Carlos ties up loose ends stateside and joins me later. Career suicide? Yes. But life is worth more than a career.
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Re: riding: not riding for the foreseeable future, given our local hospital’s numbers. Cycling on anything that isn’t paved or a rail trail might also get put on hold.
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