Blog Hop: Would You Rather

Found at A Enter Spooking, who got it from Anxiety at A.

Spooky or Steady:
Oh, God, steady. I lose my patience way too fast with spooky. I know that’s not a good quality in a horseperson, but – it’s the truth. Tristan getting spookier in his old age is like the personal growth phase I didn’t want.

Matchy-Matchy or Mismatched
Hahahahaha. Clean and in good repair? I’m just not a matchy person. I think that’s been proven over the years. It’s one of the reasons I buy most things in black or gray.

Tall boots or Half chaps
Tall boots, always, ever since I started riding. It’s hard to explain but half chaps feel weird and wrong to me. I’ve certainly tried over the years – I own half chaps and winter & summer paddock boots, but…it just doesn’t work.

Indoor or outdoor
I live in Vermont. Outdoor is the exception to the rule. I do like it quite a lot but between the idiocy around the changing of the seasons, the rain/snow/ice/wind, etc., I ride in the indoor the vast majority of the time.

Bay or chestnut
Oh, bay. I love a nice plain bay.

Hard shell boots or sport medicine boots?
I looooooooooooathe sports medicine boots. Hate. With fiery passion. Devoted an entire blog post to them.

That said – I’ve never owned or used hard shell boots.

So my answer here is off the menu: Tris uses the Dressage Sport Boots, which are soft but not the sport medicine boot style.

Free Board for a Year or 20k for a shopping spree?
Board. Which would end up being way less but I don’t need anything that I could spend $20k on right now. So I’d have board (and presumably lessons since they are part of my board bill) covered and stash that money away into savings. In the someday future I will definitely be dropping that kind of money on a truck and trailer, but I have no outlook on that right now.

Long or short mane or roached mane?
Out of sheer laziness, long. Never have I ever pulled Tristan’s mane, despite several trainers expressing their opinions on it.

Lazy or hot horse?
I’m just more of a kick ride person. I’d like there to be some response to the kick, but my brain does not interface well with hot/tense/go-go-go.

Private barn or a boarding barn?
I’m assuming in this scenario private barn is “boarding with just a friend or acquaintance” in which case, boarding barn. Horse people are crazy, even the ones I love, and I would not want to sour a relationship like that.

Create your dream barn or own your dream horse?
I’m assuming dream barn comes with acreage? But yeah, barn. Dream horse is a mutable, impossible concept (much like dream job). Dream barn would be 20-30 acres, with 10 of it in good flat-ish pasture and some dry lots, an indoor and outdoor, five stalls, and 20 acres in rolling hills and some woods with maintained trails.

Roman nose or dished face?
Roman! Have you seen my horse?

Ride an Olympic-level horse or take a lesson with an Olympian?
If I rode an Olympic horse, I would die. The horses that get to that level without having at least a few screws loose are few and far between. So, lesson, please.

Own a miniature horse or a donkey?
DONKEY. OMG. I love them. The first barn I ever rode at, as a small kid, had two resident burros who just wandered around the property and they were the BEST.