23/02/2026
It feels heavy at the moment.
If you’re in the horse world, you can feel it in the air........ heavy. 🌧️
Open social media and it’s there.
Yards closing.
Small charities folding because the bills don’t add up.
Independent businesses announcing redundancies with words that sound calm but feel devastating.
Owners quietly admitting they are terrified about hay prices.
People stretching feed, rotating fields that have barely recovered, praying the grass comes through. 🌾
And it is hard not to absorb it.
It’s like the news cycle. You don’t want it under your skin, but it seeps in anyway. You scroll once and suddenly your nervous system is braced.
Equestrians are good at coping. We are practical. We graft. We get up in the dark and we carry on.
But right now a lot of people are at breaking point.
It is not weakness guys
It is not poor planning.
It is not “well you chose horses.”
The cost of living has hit hard. Weather patterns have been brutal. Insurance has climbed. Feed has climbed. Hay has climbed. Livery has climbed. Everything has climbed except most people’s wages. 📈
And when your animal depends on you, the pressure feels relentless.
You cannot “just leave it.”
You cannot skip the basics.
You cannot opt out for a month to recover financially.
It is constant responsibility.
What makes it harder is the comparison. Someone always looks like they’re managing better. Someone always looks like they’re thriving.
But behind a lot of tidy photos are spreadsheets that do not balance. Behind a lot of cheerful posts are people lying awake at 2am doing maths in their heads.
It is okay to say this is hard 👏🙏
It is okay to admit you are tired.
It is okay to feel grief for the version of horse ownership that felt lighter.
And it is also okay to protect your own nervous system.
Mute what you need to mute.
Step back when it feels overwhelming.
Check in on your people privately rather than absorbing the entire industry’s pain.
Community matters. But so does capacity.
If you are struggling, you are not the only one. Not even close. 🤍
And if you are just about holding it together, that counts too.
This is a tough season. For yards. For charities. For small businesses. For ordinary horse owners doing their absolute best.
We can be honest about that without giving up hope.
One day at a time.
One field at a time.
One hay round at a time. 🐴
