and I thought this topic was just another offshoot of Lauren Kanarek’s life
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I don’t think having that number of horses, or moving them back and forth cross-country is going to be a feasible option.
One of my boarders had her horses shipped from the Midwest (Chicagoland) to So Cal a couple of years ago, and it was $3600 per horse. I am sure it is more to the DC area. Say $4k times 4 = $16k per move. It doesn’t sound like that is likely to be a feasible price point if vet bills were a stretch recently.
Downsize to zero or maybe 1 horse, doable.
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Exactly. There’s no point taking a horse to an urban area for 5 months when you will be deeply engaged in some kind of training or internship activity. You want every moment to count for networking and learning this new world. Not driving 2 hours in horrible traffic to an expensive barn twice a week.
A mere college degree is not a ticket to anything these days unless it’s a very focused program like nursing. Your future career will depend a lot on the extra curricular activities, including internships.
When I look at my friends who were in student newspapers and student politics in the 1980s, so many of us leveraged that experience to get jobs in comms, media, politics, campaign organizers, consultants, high level government jobs and advisors. That was all from the extra curricular “club” engagement.
The students who did the required school work, lived at home, continued their teenage life basically, had a harder time launching.
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I was an absolute moron for my first few years of college. At one point I owned four horses, so to me, this situation doesn’t come across as completely and totally unbelievable. I had lots of help (family helped with my living expenses and I was able to keep the horses turned out on property belonging to friends), but the fact of the matter is that I was pretty damn dumb at that point in time, and I clung to the horses as long as I could. I absolutely SHOULD have been focused on figuring out life, but I obviously lacked maturity and couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
I ultimately ended up getting serious about things, made some legitimate plans for my schooling and career, changed majors, and transferred to a different school. Sold all the horses but one - and I leased her out while I was in college so I could focus.
I figured things out eventually, but I had to learn the hard way, and it took some time. OP, if you’re still reading, don’t be me. Don’t make the same mistakes I did. I wasted valuable time, and earlier focus and planning would have put me on a much easier trajectory in life. As Scribbler has said, travel light. Sell/rehome/lease the horses, reduce complications, focus on school. The rest of your life will be SO much easier and ultimately horses will end up being SO much more accessible if you can set yourself up to have a solid, dependable career.
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Yes. I’m also guessing that OP may come from a family where university and professional careers are not the norm, what we call “first generation university.” I came from this kind of family as did many friends, and also many of my current students.
One thing this means is that university is uncharted territory to both the family and the student. Parents can be very ambivalent. They may be proud you are going to college in the abstract, but may not be able to guide you to the best choices. They may also be resentful and anxious as they see you turning into a new person that they don’t understand and also perhaps changing classes.
Sometimes such families have no cash for the student, but it’s equally likely they could be families with a decent income from trades or business, who don’t fully see why you need to cross the country to a strange city or why you can’t just settle down next door and teach school locally or whatever with your degree.
They may also have no faith at all that you can make a jump to a bigger world because they don’t understand that world at all.
So I feel like parents enabling a college kid to get tied down with 4 horses may honestly feel they are being generous, but they don’t understand what you need to do to move on.
Also whatever you want to do is likely to involve post graduate training, whether that’s a law degree or accounting certificate or medical school or graduate school. So it’s not necessarily just finish up 2 years of credits from your state university and then find a good paying job somehow and keep living on the family property. You are going to need to be mobile for the next 5 years at least.
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Yup. So very, very, very true. 
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OP, this is the place in life where you learn that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
So you chose to take on the responsibility of not one but 4 horses which you couldn’t support with your own earnings? If so, you need to cut your herd and payroll down to what you can afford to pay for with money that you make. That way, the machinations and motives of all these other people can become irrelevant to you.
But as it is, all of those people have a vested interest in you continuing as you are. And you accepted that deal. They either don’t know or, more likely, don’t care that that’s not possible if you are a rising junior in college. In your spot, I’d put up very hot hot wire as a short-term solution and start selling off the horses. If you can afford to board one while you are in DC for 5 months, do that.
I have had to board any horse I owned for most of my adult life. My plan/motto has been to never live in a place that I can’t afford middle-of-the-market boarding. That has gotten harder over time, and my ability to afford board has played a part in determining where I’d live. Sometimes that meant that I couldn’t afford the level of care that I wanted. But I never had to put my animals somewhere I thought was dangerous.
Best of luck!
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Get out of that situation now. Yesterday.
As the mother of a 25 year old daughter, I can’t imagine telling her to suck it up because I called in a favor for her to have free housing. I would have had the car packed and running in her driveway.
As others have said, now is not the best time to have so many responsibilities. I think you have a good plan – rehome the rescue horse, farm out the others or sell/lease them, and concentrate on you degree. Live in the dorms if you can as it is safer, and will help you form relationships with your peers.
Your mother is not helping you. Don’t let her gaslight you into thinking this situation is anywhere close to being alright.
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Best piece of advice yet. Being a first-generation university grad in my family, my parents had no clue (and neither did I). I didn’t seek-out any extracurriculars or networking opportunities, and feel that it’s held me back immensely. I’ll absolutely be encouraging my kids to get involved when they head off to post-secondary instead of just letting them assume - as I did - that the degree alone was enough.
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My mother (and myself honestly) thought that I was being bad and rebellious by getting involved in student newspapers and politics instead of just studying. My grades were actually good, but I ended up choosing to do a half time course load, work at paid jobs, and do my extra curricular work, all of which looked scuzzy and low rent to my mother who had no clue. She actually rather disliked me at this period in time. I was a disappointment.
Those extra curricular activities taught me so much I needed to know about working collaboratively, managing people, engaging with issues, etc plus contacts and friends that I built on for the rest of my life.
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There is so much more to college than classes and coursework, and soooooooooooooooo much more to be learned.
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I can easily see the situation described by the OP in some areas of Southern California. Specifically in LA county near one of the riverbeds.
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I think I know where you mean.
Rebecca
Yep - or the inland empire.
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I was also thinking of further inland and east, like the rural parts of Riverside or San Bernardino county near Romoland, Hemet and Perris. Maybe even getting up to the high desert areas like Hesperia, Palmdale, etc. There’s certainly horse property in all those areas. Some of it is very nice. Others… not so much. And yes, there can be some sketchy areas for sure.
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I’m imaging the kind of area that is a mix between low rent acreage and business that needs sprawl like wreckers and lumberyards and machine dealers. Not “horse properties” as such, but the kind of place you could find 5 acres and put a couple of horses on. And if it’s not a real horse or farming community the horses will be an oddity and could attract unwelcome attention.
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I believe the OP said that in their area, horse properties were from half an acre to 3 acres, mostly the smaller size. Not rural or horse properties as most of us know it.
When I lived out west, I boarded my horse at a former combined racing barn and lumberyard. Both businesses were on the small, low-rent side, about 3-4 acres total. We had 8 horses there. I used some of the piled lumber to build a windbreak in my horse’s run.
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When I was a teen, for several years some kids had a Shetland pony living in a pen on the backlot of some business down in the industrial zone by the water front. It was their fathers business, so he came down daily for care. There was a great place to ride nearby on a huge field of reclaimed land covered in sand but still vacant. Pony was well cared for. He was there for several years. They came out and went riding mostly weekends (they were in another school district).
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OP, I confess I was first with the posters who weren’t even sure what you described was possible. However, I’m on a different coast than you, and after reading some replies, I am now revising my opinion. The fact so many people didn’t even believe that this was legit, however, highlights how despite what your mom and trainer say, this isn’t normal.
If you have a better situation to move your horses to, do it. It’s not a kindness to keep your horses if they’re in continually stressed and unstable situations. You also have to ensure you’re meeting your own basic needs. You need to resell or rehome as many horses as possible until you’re in a safe situation yourself. Boarding in DC is not a feasible option unless you’re very well-heeled.
It’s one thing to keep a dog or a cat when your life is out-of-control a comfort. Horses, especially multiple horses, aren’t something you can backpack around with while you find yourself and get secure. Maybe it was different in decades past, but not now.
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