Mandatory Shelter In Place

As of last night at midnight, my county, along with several other counties in the bay area and beyond, put out a mandatory shelter in place.

If you're not aware (I wasn't and definitely initially thought that meant mandatory homeless shelters, which I was supportive of), this means that all bay area residents have been instructed to not leave their houses for any reason other than absolute necessities.

Every morning I feel like I have a mild panic attack reading
the news, ugh

When it was announced, I was working TC in hand. We had stopped to take a break and I'd taken off his side rein and we were just chilling. Immediately upon figuring out what it really meant, but not reading much further, I had a pit in my stomach. The one shining light in this horrible horrible storm of COVID-19 has been the barn. It's the only place I feel normal, the only place that the world doesn't seem to be collapsing in upon. The threat of that being taken away was one thing, but then a horse got cast and panicked, thrashing around, and I very nearly lost it.

It reminds me of several articles I read on chronic stress in the brain during grad school. Underlying stress, such as the stress of housing insecurity or food insecurity or even just living a life where scarcity is a big part of it (paycheck to paycheck) takes a major toll on the brain. Brains don't work properly under stress. It's why you see the rich chastise the poor for buying unnecessarily or not making good financial decisions. Decision making and self control are not easily accessible when under chronic stress.

And so while a horse being cast and panicking (horse was fine, by the way, got up and standing on all four legs just fine) normally would make me a little worried for the horse, it now sent me into near hysterics. TC was also nervous, but he immediately recovered when the horse got up. I needed a bit longer to stand there and tell myself it was okay, giving him a hug while he stood with a foot rested, begging me to start training again so he could get clicks and treats for doing his fancy prancing.

Hah, not even

We did go back to work and had a great in-hand session, then had a good rest of our ride after that. I did some lead changes and pirouette canter and then we called it a day. I might have definitely kept riding him around the ranch a little extra while getting on my conference call. Every day we get to ride right now is a gift so I'm going to take advantage of being at the barn for as long as possible each day.

Reading between the lines of the mandatory shelter in place policy, it DOES look like it's okay to go take care of people and animals. Would my horse die without me coming down to brush him, hug him, ride him, and feed him? Absolutely not. Would I suffer mentally so much that I might commit homicide? Um, decline to comment. But at this point, a lot of bay area riders (myself included) are choosing to interpret this as us being allowed to continue to ride. But some barns have already shut down even to boarders...

My barn owner walked around and told everyone yesterday that the barn would remain open. I figure it will as long as he's in charge of that decision, so for now, we are okay. Whether things will progress, well, we'll see in a week, or maybe even in an hour or two.

Hey it's me, also the rest of us

My job in academia has transitioned to full remote and we've all admitted that work seems so silly right now. It's a good distraction though, so we are starting some fun new things to help our faculty and staff access data off the network. Teaching, as far as I know it, is still happening. I've had one client decide to do remote lessons, as they are at a private facility and need to limit people coming into the property. More power to you, I'd do the same if I had my horses at home and could control that. I haven't yet heard from my other clients, so we'll see what actually happens, but I am not going to be the one to decide not to teach, at least not yet.

I'm luckily okay without my business income right now due to the SO and I combining forces housing-wise. I can't show or take lessons or do anything fun without it, but those things are off the table anyway. It'll be tight, but I'm okay.

That being said, I'm bored as shit and it would be nice to be able to do some of the things to help small businesses like buying gift cards and all that. So I'm opening up remote lessons (variable rate, please inquire), video lessons ($40/lesson), and video test riding ($10/test, I'm still in training so I figure this helps me too). If anyone is interested, please message me on IG (@alchemy.dressage) or shoot me an email (alchemydressage at gmail).

Kate and I are talking about having some zoom meetings where we just chat about biomechanics or what she's learning from her amazing groundwork person or what I'm learning from the L program. It won't be very structured or anything, but we like to think we're entertaining when we chat on the phone about this stuff. We're going to talk more about it and then if we do decide to do it, we'll make some kind of invite for people, stay tuned if you want entertainment.

Literally the SO was like "do we have enough oreos??"

Fingers crossed that the barn remains open indefinitely and that we are successful at flattening the curve. So far I've had a slight fever last Saturday evening that only lasted a few hours and was gone. I immediately canceled my clinic on Sunday and spent the entire day inside mildly freaking out as my temperature stayed normal all day. Monday I went back to normal (lol "normal" what does that word even mean right now) and I've been feeling fine since.

Hope you are all staying safe and staying at home to the best of your ability. We haven't yet seen the worst and without testing anyone, we don't know how much our efforts are working.