Hey IPT sorry to hear about your problem and I feel very sad that you are in this situation but a late night convo last night with Springbok got me thinking....
There is SO MUCH MORE to do with horses than ride sometimes.
Im equally at home walking along beside a horse as ON a horse. I can hear your mind going what the hell is she on about...I had a mate once, and yes, he was an equine...when he developed an untreatable terminal illness and the days of riding him were over I think i gained perhaps even more joy out of him than in the days of riding (and we did some really amazing rides) when we moved to a different style of gaining joy out of a horse. We would go for long long walks through the bush, no tack, no leadropes, no halters, just a horse free and a human free. I would walk alongside him chatting away - sometimes not even in the bush, in the middle of suburbia. A mate who walked at my shoulder and swam in the ocean with me and stood and listened to my ramblings and bizarre ideas. A mate who learnt to free lunge in the middle of hundred acre paddocks so he did get his exercise and could show off how cool he was. A mate would stick his head in the window and play peekaboo through the trees.
This horse COULD be ridden but i prefered not too - he had given enough in the days when he did blackwood marathons and rode for hundreds of kms.
When this cold winter ends, i will be bringing doc back up from down south, and i probably will not ride him for 6 or 7 months, but I will train him to come for walks (yes, i will be using leadropes to begin with - not something you jump straight into) and meander around and sit down beside me in the paddock and play fetch and play soccer...I fully intend to ride him eventually but I want to train him in "mateship" before we go there.
There really is so much more to horses than just being on their backs - perhaps you could consider doing something like this so you still get your horsey fix, just in another way.
Hope things go well for you whatever you choose.
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