As temperatures drop below freezing and dusk creeps ever closer to 4 pm, my motivation for doing anything with the horses diminishes. I feel guilty, considering I grew up in Wisconsin (open a freezer and stand in it if you want the Wisconsin experience).
Now in a “mild climate” where a temp drop to 10 degrees is unusually cold, I’ve become a weather wimp. I prefer to stay in where it’s warm. When it drops below 40 degrees outside, I decide to stay in and let the horses eat some more hay.
After all, they need time to just be a horse, right?
Granted, a damp 40 degrees with soaking rain causes more hypothermia than a dry 40 degrees anywhere else. Like Mark Twain said, “the coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco.” Make that any season in Seattle.
You can dress warm in dry cold, but damp chill sneaks through the layers and right into your bones. Also the sun warms the landscape on a cold sunny day, whereas a dark gray chilly one provides no cosmic heat lamp to bask under.
So I guiltily watch the horses outside, knowing I could be working and training and even getting ready for some frigid winter shows. We showed through a few winters just fine, but that was before I became a weather wimp.