Because life with horses is never orderly.
Though one most may not appreciate you asking.
Ah, winter and the holidays: a time of wonderfully frozen tundra complete with copious amounts of food and significantly less motivation to do much other than eat it. 😉 It’s a time of wonderment: Is your horse just fluffy from being frozen or fat from not getting worked? Did those breeches feel snug because you layered or because you’ve decided pumpkin pie is a legitimate food group? So.many.questions.
Go ahead and start taking out a small loan to pay for all the shredded ones.
Not only is blanketing time consuming –particularly if you have more than one horse to shroud in said blanket– but it’s also stressful AND potentially expensive. Wow, I guess it’s sort of like a microcosm for the entirety of horse ownership….but I digress. 😀 Anyhow, blankets are just one more reason why I think Winter is some sort of unthinkable purgatory. *And before everyone chimes in to remind me that horses don’t need blankets, let me say that while that may be true of some, because I show mine and end up having to clip them so they dry from being ridden (in these grossly short days), they do end up needing blankets (like 40 of them apparently). 😉
A game no one wins.
You know what I *love*? Trying to decipher which of the 47 blankets is best suited for the greatest amount of time on any given day (because playing musical blankets is highly overrated). And yet it never fails; the days seem to go from arctic tundra directly into sweltering hot mess. Just another fun part of transitioning from the doom of winter I suppose. Here’s a fun fact a client of mine recently shared, apparently this is the WORST (read as wettest) winter on history since they started recording it in CA/NV. Fabulous. At least I feel somewhat vindicated in all my complaining. 😉
…he has a point.
Although I’d like to think my beasts understand why I have shorn their yak pelts this last week, I’m fairly certain they just think I’m a sadistic monster bent on making them miserably frozen. At least Woody believes this. Will is busy regrowing his glorious yakness and Stormy hasn’t noticed he’s naked yet. 😉
Poor schmuck has every right to buck me off when I have him running around naked at 7 a.m. in the 15 degree weather.
So as much as I loathe body clipping, I agree that for working horses it’s somewhat of a necessity (especially for mine that grow coats like yaks). However, that still doesn’t make me feel less awful when I first pull their blankets off to groom when it’s freezing out.