Sunday, March 18, 2012

That's a wrap!

The weather here has been freakishly warm the last few days.  There are crocuses popping their heads up in the back yard.  Think I'm kidding?


The first two appeared Thursday, and I now have a whole line of them, along with what I think might be snowdrops.  Or maybe they're not crocuses or snowdrops.  Short, purple and white flowers of some variety, at any rate.  And it's March.

I'm sitting here in a tank top and shorts with the windows cracked, sweating.  I'd have them open wide, but the house might take flight! A high in the low 80's with winds gusting to upwards of 45 mph... it's hopefully blowing us in some rain tomorrow.  And let me tell you, we can use it.

I didn't ride - between the wind and the boys' coats and more importantly, they both need their feet trimmed....  But since my polo wrapping technique needs practice and neither of the boys have ever worn wraps, I figured that was a nice stationary activity we could all benefit from.  After a good brushing to get rid of some more loose winter fuzz, I started with Sunny.

He's never had wraps on, but he has worn bell boots, so he got the basic concept of leaving his feet planted while I monkeyed with them.  The front feet were easy. 

First Attempt
Please excuse the long toes - 
I have a call in to the farrier.  
Hopefully her schedule will be open this week.

Well, easy in the sense that Sunny didn't make my job harder by moving around.  I still need more practice getting them to come out even and without lumps.  Once I had all four wrapped I lead him around a bit so he could get the feel of them.  He didn't seem fazed.



I wrapped and unwrapped Sunny three or four times.  He went to sleep.  Then I moved on to Thunder. 

He's never worn anything on his legs, period, so first I had to convince him no, I really didn't want him to pick his feet up.  After that, the fronts went fairly smoothly.  The backs... he wasn't quite as thrilled about, and he kept wanting to stand with his legs tight together which made it a bit tough to roll the wrap around. 

But ultimately he had all four on and we went for a walk.  He might have picked his feet up a little higher than normal for the first few steps, but beyond that the wraps didn't seem to bother him.  Of course, he had tried to stand with his back feet tucked together again when I unwrapped him...


Here's hoping the forecast is right,
the rain comes, and so does the farrier,
the fire danger goes down, 
and the temps go back to normal!

2 comments:

Sarah said...

rain and farriers....two things that we are very short handed on in this part of the country! I'm glad you have been able to find one. There is only one I know of in our relative area and he stays booked solid.

SunnySD said...

No kidding! It's amazing how hard it is to find a good farrier - and the good ones are always booked solid!

No rain yet, but it's getting greyer by the minute... fingers crossed it starts soon. Hope you guys get some, too!