The horses are big fans ...

... of fans! And 'tis the season for fans, and thank goodness for 'em, as we've had a few days of hot and humid weather.

I think the hard thing in Vermont is that the weather can change so quickly, and we never have enough of a stretch of any particular type of weather to get used to it. Typically (if there is anything typical about Vermont weather), when the hot and humid weather comes, it comes suddenly, with a vengeance.

When I first moved to this barn, they had two huge barn fans, one at the very end of the aisle and one in the middle of the barn. Those suckers were crazy powerful. They were probably a good 4 feet in diameter and stood a little higher. Dude and Bestie seemed to love being on the cross ties a few feet down the aisle from the midpoint fan on hot days - I couldn't blame them; it was a good spot.

The two monster fans died several years ago, and the solution was to double up on box fans in the same locations. I guess the monster fans are pretty expensive to replace. A few horses have fans on their doors. But not every horse can have one because it would overload the electricity. I tried a battery operated fan on Bestie's door last summer, but it didn't move much air and the batteries didn't last long enough to make it worth it. Larry has strategically placed a few fans above the walls in between stalls about half way down from the doubled-up fans. All in all, the whole arrangement seems to work pretty well until we get a day in the upper 80s with high humidity.

That's what we had last week, and that's when the low ceiling of the barn really holds in the heat. It's sticky and gross. The floors get wet from the humidity. The barn smells sort of zoo-like. It was worst mid week.

I had ridden Bestie on Sunday and her breathing seemed a bit rough. We didn't do much at the trot after I noticed it; we kind of took it easy. I rode again on Tuesday and she was fine. Then on Wednesday it was super hot, so I didn't ride. In fact, I ended up not riding again until my lesson today - Saturday. We were kind of off our game this week - off the regular schedule, anyway. Looking forward to getting back in the swing of things this coming week.