And the rains came

This post is a little late, since most of our El Nino storms are (hopefully) past us. We were supposed to get one this weekend, but it seems to be stalling and giving us less of a spanking and more of a few gentle swats.

The horses at my trainer's ranch (The Silver Rose Ranch) are mostly show horses, which means they mostly hang out in box stalls. Comfortable, roomy, but stalls nonetheless. So when torrential rains hit, we cannot get them out without worrying. The ground is slippery and some of them come out of their box stall with too much energy to walk quietly. During the last downpour, I went to the ranch, hoping to get Frostie out and at least hand-walk her around to let her stretch her legs. By the time I got from my car to the barn (a short walk!), the skies had opened up again and were dumping water on us.

"But she's been in her stall for two days now," I told Tina. "She's going to be spinning in there soon."

"She'll just have to spin," Tina said. "They all will, until we can get them out safely."

Two days later, the rain had gone and the roundpen was just dry enough to let them run amok. This is what Frostie did:

It was the best shot I could get - the others were too blurred. I like to refer to this as her "Arab mode" - tail up, neck arched, careening around the pen as she snorts.

Snoopy, fortunately, is in a large pipe stall and, although the rain might beat in at the edges, he stays relatively dry and gets more room to roam, as well as a bird's-eye view of his world. Two days later, this is what he did:

Yes, that's Tina on him. Niki has been sidelined briefly, while she had a little surgery. I won't go into detail, since I don't know how much detail she'd like to have floating around on the Internet, but let's just say she had the equivalent of a C-section, but didn't bring home any bundle of joy as a reward (or are they a punishment). So Tina has taken the horse training back for a while, in addition to all her dog training services. We all help out, so everything gets done, but she'll be very happy when Niki can ride again!

Like I've said before, under saddle, he's a dream horse. While I was getting him ready for Tina, he still wanted to eat me.