Wet and Cold

It was a rather yucky Sunday. The weather changed, and by dinner time it was cold, windy and raining.

I have to work a week of night shifts to cover off someone who is on vacation, so it's another week of not much happening with the ponies. So expect some more miscellaneous picture heavy posts this week.

After having my nap in the afternoon, I went out to the barn to blanket the kids. It had started to rain while I was sleeping, so I was feeling slightly guilty about them being naked.

When I arrived, both of my guys were standing in the shelter. They had evicted their roommate Missy (who was wearing a blanket).

I brought Cisco in first and took him straight into the arena to play for a bit. I figured Phantom wouldn't abandon her post inside the shelter, so she would be happy and dry there until I finished with Cisco.

Wet, fat pony

He was pretty wet. I hoped that he would easily play a bit in the arena, but it took some coercion from me. There was some sass - he leapt into a canter a few times, and kicked out a bit behind. Unfortunately, he mostly stayed on a 20m sized circle at the non-scary end. Le sigh.

But he didn't blow his brain when I opened the big overhead door to leave the arena. He knew it was coming, and braced himself, but didn't go flying backward. He did when we were outside the arena and I opened and closed the door, but I guess knowing that it's coming when inside is progress.

I then just threw on his rain sheet and his suit of armor and took him outside. Surprisingly, when I let him go, he didn't go to the shelter, but ran to the back of the paddock. Silly boy.

I trudged through the sideways rain to the shelter to grab Phantom. Only to find the shelter was empty. Silly me. I was pretty sure that nothing would convince Phantom to leave the shelter, but I guess something did. Since Cisco had run to the back of the paddock, it was a good guess to suppose that was where Phantom was.

With the wind whipping the rain at my back, I wandered out in the pitch black to catch the Princess. She was not impressed to have to walk into the rain. Doubly so when the others ran past us. She did the sideways walk with her head tipped at a weird angle to try to keep the pellets of cold rain off her face all the way to the gate.

She was pretty wet by the time we got into the barn. I had intended to put her in the arena for some exercise also, but she would roll for sure. And then I would have a wet, cold, and muddy pony to try to clean before blanketing. Nope.

I scraped some water off her back. Then I tried the blow dryer. That wasn't going to work. She was way too wet. So I said screw it, and just put her Bucas blanket on. (It has the wicking lining which dries her off pretty fast, so I didn't feel too bad about it.) I also added a hood to it. She hates being wet and cold.

Back out she went. And that was all for pony stuff over the weekend. They were both covered up, it was time for me to get myself tucked in for the night.

The good thing about sleeping through the morning is that by the time I get up, the snow that we are expecting should have melted so I won't have to see it.