There are sheets of rain. Every last drop of moisture sucked from the Gulf of Mexico arrives on the crest of easterly winds. When it's not raining the temperature boils into the middle 90's and the searing heat grows just beneath your skin. Everything feels like rot and nothing ever dries. Water stands in muddy puddles where two weeks ago the earth lay cracked and thirsting.
In the horse's stalls, which face eastward, the heat and humidity are overwhelming. With just a few minutes labor you begin to smell like a feral goat.
Saturday, after I picked their stalls, I hooked up a hose to the hydrant in the feed room. It's an old hose, soft and full of kinks that not even the pressure of water can straighten. I make a note to buy another one the next time I am at Tractor Supply or Home Depot. Until then this one will have to do.
I emptied Callie and Stormy's water tank and stretched the hose over the stall gates and dropped the nozzle into it. My playful horse Callie was there to give me a hand. She dropped her bald-faced head into the tank and licked the bottom, you know, where the green slime lives, until I turned on the hydrant. The trapped air and water that came in gasps startled her and she stepped back a few feet to study the situation. That's when the hose sprung a leak, and here is what happened when it did.
In the horse's stalls, which face eastward, the heat and humidity are overwhelming. With just a few minutes labor you begin to smell like a feral goat.
Saturday, after I picked their stalls, I hooked up a hose to the hydrant in the feed room. It's an old hose, soft and full of kinks that not even the pressure of water can straighten. I make a note to buy another one the next time I am at Tractor Supply or Home Depot. Until then this one will have to do.
I emptied Callie and Stormy's water tank and stretched the hose over the stall gates and dropped the nozzle into it. My playful horse Callie was there to give me a hand. She dropped her bald-faced head into the tank and licked the bottom, you know, where the green slime lives, until I turned on the hydrant. The trapped air and water that came in gasps startled her and she stepped back a few feet to study the situation. That's when the hose sprung a leak, and here is what happened when it did.
What's this?
Lemme get just a little closer.
Water, water everywhere and more than enough for me to drink...and wear.
Wonder where it's coming from, this water?
Sure hope Stormy doesn't find out about this.
Callie is really wet as you can see.
While not the herd leader, Callie is my brave girl, the one full of curiosity and the one with a sense of humor. Callie is much like a first responder, she runs toward a problem. Her reaction to the leaking hose is so typical of her.
I thought you might enjoy the following quote from a book I am reading, The Ghost Horse: A True Story Of Love, Death, And Redemption by Joe Layden and published in paperback by St. Martin's Griffin, New York.
"Some people merely claim to have a lifelong love affair with horses, while others have the scars to prove it. Horses, after all, are not like most other animals, and certainly not pets in the conventional sense of the term. They are big and strong and willful; they can be loyal or unreliable, prickly or affectionate. They are as unpredictable as they are majestic, their beauty stemming as much from inner mystery as it does from pure aesthetic. Spend enough time around horses, the true horseman will tell you, and eventually you'll get your heart broken; maybe something else, as well."
All of us who love horses would tend to agree with every word.
Copyright, September 2, 2014 by Loren R. Schumacher
Photos, Copyright, August 30, 2014 by Loren R. Schumacher
