Family Matters, Grandma replys she responds.

     The saga continues. Here is how it all went down. My earlier blog circled around asking grandma to help out. Mind you, this woman has never ever supported my rider in any way when it comes to her sport of eventing. Whoops, I forgot, she and grandpa (RIP) did go to one of her Golden Spike shows, when she was nine. Left early as I recall.  I guess they just liked soccer better. None of my kids played soccer.

Dear Katie: I received your email and am thinking about it but there is much more to buying a horse than the original cost of purchase. How are you going to support the horse; stable, food, vet bills, admission fees to shows, etc. Your Dad can no longer support a horse for you and am not even sure you should bring it up to him as he is really struggling to just pay the necessary bills like the mortgage payments on the house you and your Mom live in. Your Mom doesn't work and probably never will so she cannot help you.

I cannot buy a horse for you that will cause more financial stress for your Dad. I won't mention this to him until you tell me you have talked to him first.

I love you and want you to have what is important to you but we have to talk this thru because I am not sure it makes economic sense right now. I can help you with the initial purchase, but cannot help you support the horse bills and neither can your Dad.

Love, Grandma
Dear Grandma:

     You are right, the only way I would be able to pull this off right now, is to take a young green horse like Maggie back up to Ocala to his or another big rider like him's barn. There I got free lessons from an Olympic Eventer, board, hay, grain, trailering, A/C, washer/dryer, stove, oven, refridgerator, my own room+ trailer parking.
     Then sell a horse from there. That way it would be pure profit. I understand that the economy is crap right now, however, there are still people buying horses. One of the other working students just flew over to Ireland with a big rider (paid for him to go shop) and bought two, probably cost her $50,000.
Since, my mother stopped working selling e-cigs, yes I know she doesn't work right now, but she sure helps me. My sport/profession is not like soccer, where I could just go to a field with a ball. Working with horses is a great deal more rewarding, but sometimes dangerous. Everyone knows that a rider really should never ride without someone else around. I am extremely thankful for all my dad's financial help and also thankful to my mother, she is my biggest supporter, my promoter (always looking for sponsorships) and my biggest fan! She also does stuff on the side, that you don't know about to help pay bills, like rent out rooms in this house. Without her I don't know what I would of done.
     This idea is over for now, in the mean time I will be saving money working at the Sandwich shop, riding the  Bean (Win Championships) and collecting fees for riding other peoples horses. I also want to take some more business classes at BBC or on line. Hope you are doing well Grandma

Love Katie

     THE END

Family Matters, this is what she wrote to Grandma:

      Eventers usually have a plan A, plan B and if necessary their plan C lays in there, dormant, ready to purge up from somewhere, most likely found down deep. Plan B seemed to jump in there ahead of plan A, and wreck everything. Plan B was to broach the subject of horse ownership to the sandwich shop owners, of where she works. Chatter mouth started talking to other worker bees, of her idea. SLAM, everyone thought it was crazy. Non horse people would think that. From there she assumed all plans were dismal. Believed she had lost her mind? All this concentrated plan A,B & C stuff came about because of super sweet young four year old mare named Maggie.
     Those people don't know anything about equestrian businesses, I told her. Plan A had to be attempted so she wrote an e-mail to grandma. Not my mother grandma, her dads mother.

Hi Grandma:

     If there was a way that you could invest a nominal amount of money and double it in 2 years, or so, you would probably want to know about it, right? I wanted to share this opportunity with you first, but if you don't want to that's okay, I might be able to get the restaurant that I work at to help sponsor me. Just think, Grandma you could be the owner of a horse! Imagine it, at all the rated shows your name would be mentioned as being the owner, then my name as the rider...lol

     There is a horse in Georgia that looks fantastic! She is a four and 1/2 yr old, Bay (color brown) Oldenburg/thoroughbred mix. Her name is Maggie, and she is 16.3 hh's tall. With this mix she should be really good at both dressage and jumping. The lady that is selling her wants a more trained horse, doesn't have the time to put into training. She said she was rescued as a yearling out of a barn in Florida and she has had her ever since. The horse supposedly is calm, sweet and has really good gates (walk,trot,canter) and is already under saddle. After being up at that Olympic riders' stables for 9 months, my riding has improved 100 %, I have loads more confidence and it would be nice to bring a young horse up, train and teach her, increase her value! Having this horse could also increase other horse owners awareness of me, as a professional rider. The lady in GA only wants $3,500 which is less than Image was. Depending on how quickly she picks up on everything and how well she responds we would try to make at least 18,000 to 20,000 in two years, more training and higher levels with rated shows could possibly generate even more than that.

     Since I've come back from Ocala, I am still riding the barn owners quarter horse mare,(the Vanilla Bean) because that horse loves "eventing"! Since she is only a quarter horse, her potential to reach the higher levels is slim, however she surely could be a lower level champion...which is my goal for her. The owners will never want to sell her and my time accomplishing that goal shouldn't take very long. When I first brought this horse up to the Olympic riders place, she wouldn't load in the trailer, or move forward at all, just bucked. We did very well at our last little schooling show, 2nd place!  

Love Katie     

P.S. I haven't mentioned this to dad yet. :D