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Bills bills bills - that's life when you are a ponydad

I should have guessed it was an expensive sport my daughter had chosen as soon as I entered the classroom the first day in ponydad-preschool.

With a real danger of becoming a perpetual student, I decided to take matters into my own hands, and take a closer look at the many bills and how, even now that I am in ponydad-collage, they can make me sweat when I see horse-thingy´s that cost 200 quid’s, but looks like something I could have made myself.

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Despite there is a large market for used equipment, and my wife and daughter are very sensible when they throw their hard earned pony-dollars after saddles and bridle´s it isn´t cheap. The money quickly disappears, even if you change the gallop to tölt. If you don´t know what tölt is, just ask a ponymom or your all-knowing nano-rider.

I remember one evening about seven years ago when we had a couple of friends visiting. They told us that their daughter had joined the local gymnastic club and that they were shocked at what it costs. Our daughter had been a nano-equestrian for a little over a year at the time, and the amount our friends mentioned matched nicely with what we paid, so we quickly agreed to agree, and justify each other's outrage. Well, as one bottle of wine turned into two, we had gotten embarrassingly far into the conversation before it dawned on my wife and I that the amount our friends were talking about was their annual cost and not monthly, and we chose to keep it to ourselves – Thank god my daughter hasn´t joint the local vaulting club. Again, ask your nano-rider.

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In my first year as a ponydad, it was as if the flow of bills would take no end. I distinctly remember the time my daughter rode pixie shows. Back then, there wasn´t much difference between collecting new riding equipment and rosettes. "But you already got one of those my darling", "Yeah dad, but not this one". Ok, that is probably a little exaggerated, but you probably know what I mean.

As a newbie in the equestrian world, I was often reminded that the sport was an equipment sport. “Yes, yes, I understand”, I finally replied every time the girls came back from the horsey-shop and I once again had asked for the price. But it was, and still is, a truth with modifications. Back then, about eight years ago, I sometimes felt as if there was an unspoken rule in the secret ponymom club, saying that the more equipment, the better the equipage (equipage, nice word. 1 point for Ponydad). In my world, it was equivalent to being proud to be allowed to sit at the high table…. in an Insane asylum. It made no sense. However, I have become wiser, and today I know very well that one bridle and four bandages not necessarily is enough, even though the pony only has one head and four legs.

As I was about to end this post, last night, I asked my wife how it could be that she has not come home with bags full of horsey stuff for several months. She replied with a big smile that we now had all we needed, and that I could look at the first bills - eight years' bills! - as a kind of starter kit.

I must go now because they are missing me over at the high table.

Brrrrrrrrr

Ponydad
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