Winter Is Coming

Screenshot from earlier this week

Perhaps not surprisingly given the area of the country I live in - cold is not my thing.  In fact, the whole group of us at the barn tend to resoundingly and unanimously decide that if the weather isn't going to get above 50 degrees, that's a nope situation.

The forecast screenshotted above is for my house; the barn, being 40 or so miles farther north, is generally a few degrees colder.  That forecast also doesn't show the freaking wind chill, which is supposed to reach single digits.  Today narrowly avoided the nope because the temperature was going to be comfortable into the early afternoon - but that didn't mean any of us wanted to hang out for long! 

So I stopped at the weanling pasture to say hi to the little guy, and to check on Project "Make Justice Fat."  (He grew inches and winter hair at once.  It was... even more not pretty than his usual baby awkwardness.)

Ugh, that neck is so sad. Go play more, baby!

Fatter, taller, and still a cutie.  Awesome.

White spot check: butt spots still present, although not as many as before.  One small white spot on the muzzle.  And then there's the tail.

I halfway expect a white tail by mid-summer.

At this point, it was 45 degrees and falling.  The wind was blowing.  The sweatshirt was not enough.  Still, I'd said I was going to grab Cessa and blanket her, so off to the main pasture to collect her.

She wasn't thrilled with her blanket again, but did let us put it on her.  Once she's convinced that yes, it's going on, she's fine - but getting her there is still a bit of an adventure.

Level of impressed with the cold front: low.

Pretty girl.

All of the horses were on alert, because not only was the temperature dropping - by the time I got back into the car, it had dropped another five degrees - but the wind was blowing at a good 15-20 with gusts of much higher.  Cessa was a bit squirrely, but settled down once we walked away from the area where she was most agitated.

When we headed down to the arena to have one of the BOs check my blanket fit (more adventures in horse ownership: fitting the blanket isn't something I really had to do as a lesson kid...), the colts in the arena started running around.  We shrugged and figured they were wanting to play - which it did turn into play after a few minutes - and let it be.

Then I turned Cessa out, and we all cracked the hell up.

See, she went trotting off to the herd, who were standing there on high alert because winter and wind and hose in the trough making weird noises.  The herd took one look at her and took off running as though their lives depended on it.

Cessa chased after them - why are we running? - until they got to the far end of the pasture.  At that point, the herd decided there was a new horse in there with them (yeah, not so much, guys) and started chasing her off (she's usually high-ranking in the herd) and generally being a pain.  Miss Thing needs to lose some weight and a night or two of not standing at the bale of hay 100% of the time isn't going to hurt her at all, so we were still cracking the hell up.

I'm pretty sure she was sulking.

I have a Santa hat coming, so there may be festive pictures next weekend, assuming it isn't still this freaking cold...