Winter riding isn’t so bad. Right?

I arrive at the barn mid-to-late afternoon.  The temperature is just below freezing and it’s snowing those big puffy flakes that drift down like you are in a snow globe.  There is already a good 4-5 inches of snow on the ground.  The roads aren’t bad- snowplows have been out scraping and salting the roads. My shiny red car is now gray from the salt and dirt.

At the barn the only people there are a couple other boarders just finishing and the girls who work there.  The horses are just starting to come in for the day.  Thankful for my insulated riding boots, toe warmers and hand warmers, I plod through the snow to retrieve my horse.  He’s a good boy and comes up when he sees me.  Walking into the barn, I’m grateful that my farrier put snow pads on at our last appointment.  No ice balls to knock out of his feet and I admire how clean and pretty the snow makes his hooves.

The barn itself is old and nothing fancy.  No heat lamp in the wash stall but that’s ok.  The other horses in the barn and the old building itself help to keep it relatively warm.  That being said the water buckets in the stalls have to be insulated and the hose used to fill them still needs to be drained and placed in the tack room at night to keep from freezing.

My boy has a trace clip.  Without the clip I would spend hours drying him after our work or wouldn’t be able to work him very hard.  This is one of the most annoying things to me about winter riding: how careful we need to be about not letting the horses get wet and chilled after riding and yet still be able to work hard enough to make progress.

So we start our ride with a quarter sheet which gets removed after our warmup.  I also dress in layers which I’m forever taking off and putting back on depending on where we are in our work.  How cold it is outside also play a big part on how much work we do.  Tonight the temperature is supposed to drop pretty low so I don’t want him to get too hot then stand in his stall in the frigid cold.  So today we spend a lot of time at the walk.  Lengthen the walk, collect the walk, free walk to working walk, leg yields, circles and shoulder fore.  I’m guilty of not spending enough time working on our walk and today is the perfect time to do so.

We then move on to some trot and canter doing short intervals of work.  I don’t want to get him sweating tonight.  So the more difficult things we’ve been struggling with will be left for another day.  Today is about steady contact, lightness in the bridle and transitions where he is really listening to my seat.  We do some shoulder in and leg yield to loosen him up then call it a day.  So now we spend some time cooling down, quarter sheet and by heavy coat back on as we wander around the arena.  His breath is like smoke from his nose which makes me think he’s my fire breathing dragon.  But his cute fuzzy ears remind me of a teddy bear.  I just love my fuzzy beast.

By the time I have him cooled off, brushed and blanket put on, the barn is empty except for me and the horses.  I take a moment to enjoy the feel of how cozy it is.  All the doors closed, the sound of happy horses eating, fresh deep shavings in the stalls.  This is one of my favorite things in the world.  I leave the barn and it’s now dark out.  The snow has stopped, the stars are bright and the moon is huge.  The fresh fluffy snow sparkles like diamonds.  Sometimes you need to stop, take a moment and admire the glory in the world and not get caught up in busy-ness of life. Many people don’t like the cold, but it is nights like this that make me love the winter and appreciate it for its beauty.