Surviving the Inferno

3 June 2011 1 Comment

For those of you keeping up with my inability to catch a break, the vet was out Thursday to remove Ro’s staples. We were happy with Ro’s progress all around. Happy, happy, joy, joy, cheer all around.

That weekend, temps soared into the nineties and Ro showed off one of her many talents. She is a one-trick thermometer: temps in or above the 90s? Her left hind stocks up. We discovered this last summer, and I was prepared to deal with it again this summer… in, you know, July or August.

Not in May.

But the temps are already in the 90s, so we are already in the management zone.

Her leg gets hosed and/or iced twice a day, she’s wrapped while she’s in her stall, and she’s unwrapped for turnout at night. And, poor girl, she’s getting worked pretty much daily to ensure she really moves and increases her circulation. This time around, I added electrolytes and MSM in a Hail Mary pass to see if they would help.

Ro thinks this routine is pretty cool, except, perhaps, the working bit. She likes the attention. She also likes getting her supplement mash in the mornings instead of the evenings. She likes her mash, but she likes turnout more; she’s never been entirely thrilled about being left in her stall, even with her mash, while her buddy gets turned out. And, like a kid with a plate of vegetables, she will nose her food around a bit and then stand hopefully by the door: All done! If that doesn’t convince me to turn her out, she’ll nose her mash around some more and try the door again.

No more. Now she gets it in the morning, while I’m wrapping her legs. Because, see, I am not a morning person. Wrapping legs at an ungodly hour of the morning is more than I can handle, mostly because my brain can’t process what I need to do when the velcro ends up over the tendon: I started the standing wrap on the inside of the canon… so if I move it to the front, the velcro will end up… over the tendon, apparently. Eventually I get it right, but if you think I can remember what I did the next morning, you’re sorely overestimating my brain’s early morning processing ability.

So we repeat this daily. Ro puts up with it, because she has mash to eat.

The stocking up is under control—which is to say, she’s not stocking up at all with this routine. I’m going to see how she does this weekend without the wraps during the day; I’m hoping the MSM and electrolytes might make enough of a difference that we can manage with icing.

And, of course, riding.

You know why the ocean’s salty? It’s the run-off from all the Texas horses being hosed after their rides.

And the people, frankly, because we’re hosing ourselves down as much as we are the horses.

I swear that when I walk back in the barn after a ride, the flies start dropping dead. There simply is no deodorant in the world that can combat riding in Texas in the summer.

The only bright spot is that this barn has a covered arena. Since I am not a native Texan and I survived most of last summer without a covered arena… um, which is to say, I survived while riding for most of the summer in open arenas, not that I survived most of the summer and then died… the point being, when we moved to the barn, I looked at the arena and thought: Awesome! Keeps rain off!

Now I know better, of course. No Texan in their right mind would want to keep rain off. We’d welcome it, ride in it, sacrifice small children to it.

Keeping the sun off, on the other hand… priceless. I don’t know how I survived last summer without a covered arena, but I love having one available again. The temps are at least ten degrees cooler under it, and yes, that means I’m referring to 80 degrees as “cool.”

For some perspective, the other morning I showed up at the barn and the temps were in the 70s (if that tells you how ungodly early I am out there) and the barn worker was wearing a jacket. An actual jacket. Seriously. We’re so toasted that people are wearing jackets at 70.

Nothing we can do but gut it out, though. At least we have a routine, and the routine seems to be working.

It’s not like we’d be better off elsewhere—everywhere seems to be having extreme weather. I’m tempted to start mapping the weather articles. I’ll put big red Xs over every location that breaks some sort of historic record in a negative way. A year from now, I’ll move to whatever location isn’t X’d out.

I’d probably end up in… oh god… what if I ended up in Ohio again? I’ve been there once. I don’t want to go back. They say the devil you know, right?

The devil is clearly making his vacation home in Texas; guess I will have to get used to it.

Horses and Riding, Horses I Have Known, Ro, Inane and Mundane

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