Being Hurt means Quality Time

Because Calvin ripped his face open, I've had to go out and treat his wound every day. Holy hell it's hot, this last week it's ranged from 90-105º where Calvin is located. I board Calvin 35 mins away from my house, the upside is that it's cheap. The downside is that it's far and there's traffic at certain times. Some days I get there before 9am, which is really nice, but some days I bear the heat around 11am and we are both miserably hot.

This is the other pasture adjacent to Calvin's (they only feed alfalfa, hence why he's not in it). I took this shot when it was 105º outside and all these horses are standing in the sun. There's some perfectly good shelter in the middle with shade, but nope, they're just content roasting. I don't get it!

So hot in fact, that Calvin is sweating just standing and eating. It's worse under his mane (ladies with long hair understand this problem) and his chest. His poor buddy, Quest, sweats even more due to wearing a fly sheet. It's lose-lose though, either get eaten by flies or sweat with the fly sheet. The flies don't normally bother Calvin too much, his tail has finally grown to a useful length to swat them away. Although, the worst part about his injury is that I'm having to deal with keeping flies out of it, so gross. Would the world really be worse-off if flies didn't exist?

I was able to ride him a few times this week since on some days I was able to get there early enough to beat the heat.  I have to ride him in the halter still because his injury is still so raw, which means we are training differently, such as re-learning steering with a halter and based on legs/seat alone. He's doing pretty well, the only problem with the halter is that if he decides to be an idiot I really don't have any control. Luckily, it's been so hot that he doesn't have much idiot in him.

We rode in the big arena today with 2 goals. 1) That Calvin will not ram my knees into the railing and 2) To not be an idiot because of the halter. There were two other girls there, and we don't really have much experience with other horses riding in the arena with us because I come at odd-hours. However, this experience was on a weekend so lots of people were out riding. I wasn't sure how Calvin would behave with horses walking/trotting/and cantering by him since a little over a year ago it didn't go so well. I didn't need to worry though, he was absolutely amazing. He didn't try to run after them and was okay being by himself and doing our own thing. He liked to watch the other horses, but made no attempt to be near them. 

Checkin out the other horses

I think he's actually growing up! They were doing crazy stuff too, they were barrel racers so they were galloping past him and cranking on their horses' faces (linked video gives a great example of how rough barrel racers can be). Not all barrel racers are that way, but the people around here sure are. It's painful to watch, but nothing I can do about it. People don't realize you can actually have a better horse when you don't yank on their mouth and spur the crap out of them. Anyway, despite the craziness around him, he was very well behaved in the halter and he listened very well, good boy! 

Bath time! I let his mane grow out to protect his neck from flies since they are the worst this time of year, come cooler temps that mane is getting snipped again, I can hardly wait.