By April D. Ray 

After being late to work one morning due to a disagreement with my horse, a friend said to me: “Nothing to do with horses can be put on a timeline!” I couldn’t agree more. 

As someone who is frequently late, I can honestly say it’s often because of something to do with the horses, whether it’s a lesson running late, something taking longer than expected in the barn, or anything in between. Now, I’m not using horses as an excuse, but more as a reason – and it’s a good one. Admittedly, I cram far too much in a day to try and do it all. But with horses sometimes you just can’t schedule things. If one of the horses I am working with misbehaves, I can’t tell it their time is up and just leave. I am committed to getting the job done and hope that everything else can wait and people will understand. 

I teach and train on a freelance basis, in addition to working at a full-time job, and often go to multiple barns in a day to get all my lessons done. I can’t stand idle time, so don’t allow a lot of wiggle room between lessons and inevitably, for various reasons, I am sometimes late for a lesson. Luckily, I have very understanding and flexible clients, but things happen and there’s no use in feeling bad about something you can’t control. But what I can control is building more time into my schedule to allowing for the inevitable. And also, more realistic expectations about how long it takes to do something or drive somewhere.

“I hate being late but I’m so good at it!” ~Unknown