#eskada

So I’m going to answer this publicly for everyone to know what’s going on.

A couple weeks ago I made the decision to give up my lease on Eskada for financial reasons. I was spending roughly $2000 a month between board, lease fee, and upkeep, and I simply couldn’t keep going. I’m down to my last dollar just keeping him sound and it’s not fair to me, to him, or to anyone else. The stress of it all was effecting everything in my life. I was constantly frustrated, angry, upset, and depressed, to the point where I could barely ride anymore and when I did was riding poorly because I had all of my financial troubles weighing on the back of my mind. I was riding about once a week, and paying $2000 a month to do so. It was just way too much. I made this decision with the intention of picking up my lease again in a couple months after I had saved up some money and wasn’t scraping the bottom of the barrel at every turn, and hopefully would be showing by the end of the season. 

When I rode him last Monday, he was obviously unsound so I put him away. He was still unsound on Tuesday when my other half rode him, so we had the vet look at him on Friday. The vet determined that the best decision would be to do surgery to fuse his pastern and ankle joints, which would run $4000-6000, but the prognosis wouldn’t be great since he’s older and has struggled with soundness for so long. He said the other option would be retirement.

Collectively, the three of us (myself, my other half, and our trainer) decided retirement would most likely be the best option as none of us could afford the surgery and there’s no guarantee of soundness after the fact. We feel that every time we get one thing fixed another goes wrong, and it’s not fair to him to keep trying to fix them all, and it’s not fair to us to keep paying for it. At some point you have to let it go. I’ve probably poured $10,000 or more into a horse I don’t own trying to keep him sound, and I just can’t do it anymore.