I went down to Randolph to take care of the horses this morning, as usual, although this time I brought the boyfriend with me. It's the first time Alex has been out to the barn with me to do more than watch; he's interested in what I do, and willing to learn, and since I hadn't had a chance to see him for more than an hour or so at a time since break started we figured it'd be a good chance to enjoy each others company.
We enjoyed it, all right. In 10 degree weather with 55 mph winds (constant, not gusts) and blowing snow drifting at heights half of the barn, slush turning to ice, and several Ponycicles.
We got to the co-op barn after a slightly harrowing drive down; snow was drifting all over the place making it impossible to see where you were going or the patches of black ice that layered the interstate in a few spots. The first thing I see upon pulling into the barn is Ernie, standing OUTSIDE (of course...) and COVERED in snow. I mean COVERED. A nice icy layer over his blanket, icicles hanging off his ears, mane, whiskers, everything. He had a layer of crusty snow over his neck and even his eyelashes were frozen and encrusted with ice. Stella was smart enough to stand inside, but she was pretty snowy, too. Once inside, I found out why.
Snow was EVERYWHERE. We keep a pretty clean barn, but it's not tightly sealed. It's old, drafty, and there's lots of holes and places for things to come in and out. There was snow drifted in by the main door at least a foot high. Snow covered the aisleway, the fronts of the stalls, the hay, everything. There was even a fine layer of snow over everybody's halters.
Stella and Ernie both had a good two feet of snow along the sides of their stalls. You couldn't see any of the bedding, it was covered and/or mixed with powder. Their water buckets were rimmed with snow, their feedtubs were rimmed with snow. Everything was simply covered.
We pulled both horses out of their stalls, stuck them on crossties in the aisle, pulled their blankets and covered them in coolers to help melt the snow. Then we started in on the stalls. After closing both dutch doors in both stalls, it took us (doing one stall each) over an hour to shovel out the snow that was just snow and then strip out the snow/manure/urine/bedding mixture. I didn't even try to save anything, you couldn't tell what was what anyway. We swept down both stalls, cleaned the snow off the walls and buckets, then brought down a bag of new bedding for each horse. Some hay and fresh water and they were done. All in all, the normal chores took over 1 1/2 hours, double the time it usually takes. We still had to tackle the horses.
Stella was easier, so we started with her. We each took a side and handpicked the icicles and big chunks of snow off and brushed off everything else. Her mane was still looking a little rough at the end, but it was the best we could do. I picked out her feet and brushed her blanket off and put her back, shut into her stall but warm and away from the wind.
Ernie took quite a bit longer. It took us 20 minutes on each side to clean him off, and I had to take home his top blanket because it was too encrusted with snow to put back on him. He had wicked snowballs in his feet which didn't particularly want to come loose, which is always fun. After hacking at his feet for a while, pulling frozen snow out his mane and currying until our arms fell off we finished, over 2 hours after we started. I banged out everybody's water buckets and filled them with fresh (not frozen!) water, and we headed for the car.
This was Ernie's top blanket AFTER sitting in a warm car for an hour AND hanging in a heated garage for 3 hours. I'll leave it up to you to imagine what it looked like before.
I didn't take any pictures of the horses. We were too cold and it was a little too urgent to get everybody cleaned off and comfortable that I completely forgot the camera.
The only good part, save for having nice, warm, clean ponies afterwards, is Alex appreciates what I do at the barn a little more now. Not that he didn't before, he just didn't know exactly what I spent hours a day there doing. I explained to him that most of the time I'm a little more productive, actually riding and working horses, not just cleaning them off. Either way, it was a new experience for him, and a little bonding for both of us.
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