The Big Smoke

Well, I didn't get much riding in last week. The smoke was back for most of the week, and we had a few days back in the 10+ for air quality - that's on a scale where 0 is desirable. (Remember the picture of the apocalyptic sky from a couple of weeks ago? Fun fact - my city had the worst air quality in the world (urban areas over 250,000 people) that day. Worse than China and India.)

I haven't had any problems breathing, but sometimes have had a bit of a sore throat or a cough. The ponies live outside though, and don't really have a way to get out of the haze.

We've barely seen a blue sky in about 3 weeks. Just haze.

From talking to a couple of people who have ridden their horses on some of the bad days, it seems that the main issue that they have noticed is the lack of energy in their horse. They've been keeping the rides easier, but their horse just doesn't seem to have any gas in the tank.

Some of the local events have been either modified or postponed when the air quality is up around 10. A little local open show moved to another facility so that they could be inside. An event last weekend was supposed to be a 3 day, but they moved cross-country and stadium to Sunday and did nothing on the Saturday.  A Pony Club rally this past weekend was only going forward with the riding if the air quality dropped to 7.

Thankfully our temperatures have dropped well below melty levels, and we've had a bit of rain, with more in the forecast. These helped to drop the air quality this weekend to much better levels. However the fires are still burning in BC, and we could see the return of the smoke and haze anytime.

Fly masks are on because of the late summer flies that love Cisco's face.

I'd love to just take the ponies out for a hack down the road to get them some exercise when the air is bad, but the late summer flies are horrible.  I can't stand being outside with a swarm of small flies around my head. And now I'm going to be working night shifts for a couple of weeks. So the kids will likely end up with a pretty light workload for a bit. Again.