Yikes. It's been a while. Totally due to a combination of the winter season starting up at work and the holidays. And frequent stretches of work craziness combined with cold weather have led to very quick trips to the barn for grooming Dude and Bestie and mucking, but no riding.
The good news is that we're starting to see more light at the end of the day, which is nice, and I'm happy to no longer be driving in the dark if I manage to get out of work by 4:30 or so. The horses are still on their winter turn-in schedule, which means they come in around 3 pm. That's fine, because they seem to get bored outside once the morning hay is gone. The geldings appear to spend much of the day chewing on each other. Dude has little patches of hair missing from his jaw and his rear end - they can even get under the blanket and turnout sheet to nibble!
Seems like every winter about this time I start debating the merits of the blanket/turnout sheet combo that I've always used versus the insulated turnout blanket. The good thing is that if the turnout gets wet, generally the blanket stays dry for them to wear inside. Despite the extreme waterproofing I did late in the summer of the turnout sheets, they're still soaking through in heavy snow. It's very frustrating, but maybe the waterproofing just doesn't last more than a couple years. At least the moisture soaked into their under-blankets only once. Dude's turnouts seem to be slightly more water repellent than Bestie's (with the exception of her brand new one purchased in the late fall).
I'm hoping to squeak through this winter with the current turnouts, but I think I'm going to have to invest in new turnout sheets for next year. I've already got a bunch of catalogs laid out with pages marked - blankie buying is one of my favorite things :)
