One of the many joys of living in New England is the strange and violent weather patterns. I usually take great joy in nature's shows of strength, but freezing rain is not something I enjoy. Snow? Yes. Large amounts of snow? Very much yes! Freezing rain? Eeeww. The horses seem to feel the same way. UK especially hates getting wet ears.
Needless to say I really haven't been able to ride. It's been in the single digits or below zero every night this week and the days haven't been much warmer. Those temperatures combined with the 2+ feet of snow have made things a bit difficult. These are the times I dearly wish that I had an indoor ring or had the time and the resources to trailer to an indoor ring. My truck is out of commission at the moment, and it still needs a trailer brake control before I could use it anyway.
Even though I was wet and cold I did manage to enjoy myself as I was caring for my horses this evening. There is just something about being surrounded by my four legged friends and some good honest manual labor to take away the stress of the day. General and UK were funny to watch. General desperately wanted to play and UK humored him for awhile, trotting along and playing tag with his "little brother". When UK was finally tired of playing he just stood there ignoring General, which made General start barking to get his attention. It was quite amusing, as this is pretty much the only time I hear General use his vocal cords for something other whining.
The night beforehand was quite exciting! Kristy and I had finished taking care of the horses, said goodnight and then went our separate ways home. I was a few miles from the barn when my cell phone rang. It was Kristy, there were horses running loose in the road. I did a u-turn and flew towards where she was. When I got close it was then time to slow to a crawl, as the road she was on was curvy and I didn't want to run into the scared horses that were roaming the road somewhere. Eventually I came up behind Kristy's car and put on my hazard lights. I grabbed the only thing I had that would be of help in the car, a dog leash, and went to help Kristy who was in the process of trying to herd two frightened horses up a driveway.
I got the leash around one of the horse's neck, and grabbed the mane of the other one, luckily they were small horses. Then I pulled out my cell phone and called my mother-in-law to see if she knew who the horses belonged to. Meanwhile Kristy is trying to get the attention of the people that live in the house that owns the driveway by yelling as there was two large irish wolfhounds that were keeping her from getting anywhere near the door.
Eventually someone poked their head out, and it turned out that they were the owners of the horses. They were very grateful, and we helped them get Ollie and Lola back to their barn. Ollie who is a 28yr old gelding had managed to bust through his electric fencing. It also turned out that they knew my mother-in-law, as she is their bookkeeper. I was really happy that our little adventure ended well!
Tomorrow will be gross, and then it's going to get really cold. Oh winter how I love you and yet wish you would end soon!
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As a bonus, I just realized that I forgot to mention I started to do some clicker training with both UK and General last month. UK is the smarter one of the two. UK will now pick up a brush from my hand and hold on to it. This is a great thing as he's really touchy about his muzzle. I hope to get him to really get brave and move on to holding "scary" things, but for now we'll just stick with brushes!
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