Rain

Rain is not a friend to the horse enthusiast, as far as actual riding goes.  If you are lucky enough to have an arena, and I do, you are lucky enough.  However, in my circumstances getting into the area requires a boat or hip waders.  Since I am not into seriously making my life difficult, I usually forgo the arena in rainy weather.  For that reason, there is no riding in rainy weather at my house.  I'm a big wimp at my age (64) when it comes to riding under extreme circumstance and in my case, rain is an extreme circumstance.  So is excessive heat, cold, ice, snow, wind, mosquitoes, motorcycle runs, and bike races.  Every year as I get older there seems to be a new event added to my list to avoid.  Dogs are a big deterrent as well.  I want to ride to relax not to prove my manhood (even though I am a woman).

The rain we are getting now (April) will, of course bring beautiful, lush green hay fields and pastures, which are always a joy.  And in these days of uncertainty about the price of hay, and with the demise of many hay fields in the area, having our own hay is a real gift.  It is a gift that requires a lot of work as baling and stacking hay is labor intensive, which brings up another issue;  its hard finding young people who want to do that kind of work.  The best time for making hay is when it is hot and dry, and I mean HOT.  Most of the time hay baling is done in temps of 90 - 100.  There are a lot of other issues with making your own hay.  Too much or not enough rain influence the crop and determine when the hay can be brought in.  Since we don't have our own baler, we rely in a local farmer to squeeze our few six or seven acres in when he has time.  The rack wagons don't fit in our barn so the hay has to be stacked on the wagons, re-stacked into pick up trucks and then finally stacked in the hay mow of the barn.  We have a hay elevator, but it does not fit in the second barn.  And even though it is our own hay, we have to pay for use of the equipment and the hired hands to move the hay around.  Keeping people hydrated is important and frequent rests and cool areas are vital.  We don't want people falling off the hay racks.   Another issue with balking hay is that the cooler the weather, the sweeter the hay, so we usually want hot weather for putting up hay.  Once in the barn it is good practice to salt the hay so it doesn't spontaneously combust.  We do our best to make sure the hay is dry, but occasionally a "hot" bale with slugs of green hay ends up getting stacked and has the potential to start a fire.  Anyone who has done this a few times can feel the weight of a green bale, or slugs, within the bale because it will be heavier than the others.  When caught, those bales are removed for immediate use so they don't heat up.

Pastures - it would be delightful if we could just turn the horses out to pasture.  Our problem is that our pony foundered last year and is now restricted to how much fresh grass he can eat.  Foundering in horses (now known as laminitis) is when the horse gets too much sugar from the grass and that basically attacks his muscles and laminae in the hoof, causing inflammation and crippling if not cared for.  Antibiotic and pain medication for a month or so should relieve the pain, but on-going treatment is also required.  Often these horses are said to be insulin resistant - a lot like diabetes in humans - it effects them a little differently, but they are treated the same; restriction of carbs like fresh grass and oats, corn, sweet feeds, etc.  Sooooooooooo the pony can no longer have as much as he used to.   Since all my horses are pretty much overweight they are all susceptible to this malady.  Also since it is difficult to separate the pony from the herd, we treat them all as if they had the same disease.  Our horses get out on pasture for 1 - 2 hours only during dry, sunny days.  When it rains they tear up the grass and our purpose is to be able to feed them that same grass, so we rotate pastures and make sure they are not out too long.

My last comment on rain is that it makes mud.  Mud is no friend of mine, although the horses seem to love it:  to roll in that is.   Then the human rider has to spend a lot of time trying to get the mud off so I can put on a blanket and saddle!  I don't ride bareback any more.  My balance in the saddle is questionable, let alone on a slippery bare horse's back.  So if I am not exhausted after cleaning up the mud-loving equine I want to ride, I actually get on and ride.  Then as quickly as tack is removed and the ride is over the horse rolls in the mud again.  It's a never-ending battle.  Mud also pulls my boots off when I am trying to walk across the holding pen.  When my body is in motion it tends to stay in motion (Newton's law of physics) so when in midstride the mud pulls the boot off, the foot keeps going and the stockinged foot ends up the in muck.  Not my happiest moment when this happens.

My best year for riding was a drought.  No mud, no mosquitoes,  little hay, of course, but there is always a trade-off.  Horse riding seems to be a crap-shoot these days.