atomicules UnDeRgRoUnD > Ponies > Reconciliation --- Pony Reconciliation ------------------------------------------- Spring 2014 ----------- I haven't written anything of significance here since my first compulsion to write something about our lives with ponies. I think I probably thought I already had embraced ponies - as opposed to endure - in part by writing something up here (even though I still like to moan about them I feel what I have written here is mostly in a positive light), but mainly because the only thing I hadn't done was ride a damn pony myself: Cleaning, washing ("It'll be fun!" - It is _never_ fun), mucking out, handling, leading, un-tacking, even "teaching" (within my limited abilities). But I can see now that I have only endured. Still somewhat endure if I'm honest. However, at the same time I do accept and realise that it would be a waste of an opportunity for us not to try to have ponies: We might not always be as fortunate as we are now to live in the beautiful Aberdeenshire countryside with a stable and paddocks mere metres from our house; There are plenty of people with ponies that have a less fortunate set-up than ours. We came into this spring after a relatively mild winter, at least in temperature, and as a family had reached a bit of a low with ponies. Admittedly winters are hard work and little fun with a handful of these four-legged creatures to look after, even with mild winters, but this slump was more than just winter blues and we started - really "we", it wasn't just me - to question whether having ponies was really what we wanted. The girls were somewhat taking the ponies for granted and seemed relatively disinterested and far more enthused to spend their time inside on computers. My wife was frustrated with having to do all the work with the ponies with no help from the girls. And I was annoyed at everyone else for being disinterested and frustrated when they had "everything they wanted". So after one of those family discussions that I thought only actually occurred in soap operas we agreed it would be foolish to give up whilst living here and that we were all in this together and therefore _all_ had to put in a bit more effort. We divided up jobs and responsibilities amongst ourselves and set ground rules such as "No computers after school until you've said hello to your pony" and even came up with the idea of a "Hug a pony" chart so we could have a bit of fun (fun being a key thing) with the ponies and a bit of a weekly competition to see who in the family had hugged the most ponies; Pip is incredibly elusive so it's no easy feat to get all five. We also decided we'd try to join the Pony Club and do more Pony Club events, which are based around fun (again fun being key) and learning, as opposed to showing which is incredibly stressful and in turn leads to arguments and shouting and all of us having a thoroughly miserable time. Unfortunately this has turned out to be an ongoing process rather than an overnight turn around. After a good start things have gradually fallen by the wayside and we are going to have to go back and see what we can do to get everyone happy again. There are some obvious things we missed like making sure we had a chart or list drawn up and put up in the kitchen with everyone's jobs on it and some less obvious things such as "pony hugging" falling by the wayside: The idea was that this would promote routine contact with the ponies and act as a gateway drug to spending more time with the ponies than with computers. But I am just as guilty at letting this slip and if I'm not embracing it, or the girls don't believe I'm embracing it, I guess they aren't going to see why they should do it either. I've realised I don't hate the animals themselves. As I've alluded to above my issues have been and still are related to the things that come with having ponies: Being cripplingly poor every SINGLE month can seriously drag me down, especially during the periods when it seems like no one is really enjoying or wanting it any way. So the key there, it seems, is to make sure everyone _is_ enjoying it. If I embrace more than just endure then perhaps I can help with that. ------------------------------------------------------------------- atomicules UnDeRgRoUnD gopher://gopher.atomicules.co.uk/ atomicules Overground http://atomicules.co.uk ------------------------------------------------------------------- Powered by Floodgap's Bucktooth .