I’ve been back to horse ownership for four months, and I’ll confess: I haven’t made a “quick trip to the barn” yet. Typically, going to the barn has involved catching my gelding, Happy, grooming him while chatting with the other boarders, asking him to do his carrot stretches, tacking up, riding, cooling down/untacking/cleaning him up, completing a few more stretches, and, finally, tidying his stall and grooming area.

Many of these are run-of-the-mill rituals I had enjoyed prior to selling my previous horse more than a decade ago. That’s quite a time span with no daily horse care routine, especially after keeping horses on my family’s property for as long as I could remember. In a way it made things simplerÑmy car was free of tack, mud, and horse hair. I had more time for things like cooking, cycling, and traveling. I could go ride friends’ horses if I was nostalgic for the barn scene.

But I didn’t realize how much I’d missed the simple routines of horse ownership until I purchased Happy. Even the act of driving to the barn has made me misty-eyed on more than one occasion; having a horse is a remarkable source of happiness. And at the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event trade show here in Lexington in April, I began grinning like a little kid when I realized I had a particular horse in mind for the snaffle bit I was assessing. Clearly, I hadn’t realized the extent of my missing horses.