The Farmer’s Almanac assures us a warmer winter, although a wetter one. How you could wring any more moisture out of the sky than we had last year is a mystery.
Mother Nature: “Challenge Accepted.”
Jeff calls from the mountains every day with updates, “21 inches last night.” “A foot last night.”
We may need to invest in snorkels.
Most of all, the horses love the mud. LOVE it. A better person than me would bathe the horses (especially the ones with any white spots) prior to going out. Ugh, please. I can’t. It’s such a futile effort and it seems like there are so many better things to do with my time than to wash a horse that loves nothing more than to be dirty. Should we really take that joy away from them?
We’ll continue with our mantra that “happy horses are safe horses” and use that as our excuse for having “brown” white horses.
Guest, “That’s an unusual color of horse, what do you call that?”
Us, “Manure stains and mud.”
What the horses fail to realize is that no one wants to pet a dirty horse. You know what horses love almost as much as a roll in the mud? Human affection. Yet, the two activities are diametrically opposed.
I’ll explain that to them, “You guys, rolling in manure is diametrically opposed to getting loves.”
The problem is, the mud-rolling isn’t a deterrent for ME to keep me from scratching them. So, I’m reinforcing the behavior I don’t want. Clearly this is why they don’t believe me that rolling ≠ petting.
Maybe the better approach is to tell people that the horses are covered in Red Mountain Terroir.
“And you’ll see here a collection of Red Mountain soils — highly alkaline — baked by the sun into the coat of this horse.”
Well, the presentation needs work but I think we may be onto something…
The horses enjoy a little nap in the dirt.
