Never Ending Heat

This heat has pushed my coping skills to the limit. Because of my health, I don't dare be out during the hottest part of the day to make sure the horses are cool. The pastures are burned up and I'm throwing hay. The price of hay is already sky rocketing. I did get my order in but I may not get everything that we need. What few bales I have left over from last year are going to have to hold me over until fall; so much for using them at the beginning of winter and cutting down on the cost of hay.

The heat has also maxed out my temper. I am forcing the mares to stay in their dried up pasture until I can come up with some other idea. Rabbit and Mayhem broke into my hay stash and trashed a big square bale. Queen also broke in to the hay shed and was wandering around in the stalls. They were there long enough to do damage to everything so now they are in their pen and won't get out until I can get some fencing done in the other pasture.

It's too hot to do any fencing. I am so very grateful to everyone who volunteered to come out and do fencing Sunday. Mike and I did sneak out Sunday to put up fence but I had a bad feeling where we were putting the fence was in a bad spot. I couldn't be out there to flag the fence line or double the line either.

I decided Monday morning at 4:30am that I would unhook the gooseneck (since two of the six stalls were taken up with corral panels), that I would switch to the stock trailer. I was able to catch Brego and Ivan right away and then coaxed Dude in too. Dude has to be the first at everything so I figured he'd better be over at the new pasture.

Bad Idea.

I should have grabbed Dude, King, Rain, and Chaos instead. Dude got Ivan and Brego running and the minute Mike drove away, Dude blew through the fence. Of course it wasn't really all his fault. He didn't even see it. What I didn't like was that he wouldn't let me catch him so that I could walk the fence and find out exactly how much damage he'd done to the fence. Not letting me catch you means a very ticked off me, especially when it was already in the 80s by 8:30am. By that time I couldn't catch anyone. So I walked the fence, found exactly where it was broken (of course without the proper tools to make it work) and finally caught Dude. I left halters on knowing that something like this could happen.

Unfortunately I didn't have any lead ropes (otherwise I would have never been able to catch him). With Dude in tow, I walked up to the trailer but Ivan and Brego decided to take off and I was left dangling from Dude's halter as he started to rear and spin around. I don't remember, but I swear I was lifted off the ground a couple of times while trying to get him out of the pasture. His bad behavior (and blowing through the fence) was more than my temper could handle.

I loaded Dude into the trailer, he trashed around like a four year old throwing a temper tantrum, and I proceeded to put him in the timeout pen. He's herd bound and I was pissed (excuse the language). He's never been alone but I was sick of his bad behavior. I know he was just missing Chaos but he needs to have manners and having him toss me around like a bag of potatoes was the last straw. I put him in the timeout pen and went to retrieve Ivan and Brego.

Luckily Ivan and Brego are pretty laid back. They've been in a tiff with each other the last few days so I wasn't sure if putting them in together would be good for them or not. Luckily, it was good. They behaved and didn't try to blow through any fence. They were pretty content to hang out in the pasture and rather disappointed to load back into the trailer. (On a side note: Brego is starting to get a soft spot in my heart. The other day I was having a bad day and I was walking through the gelding herd. Brego came up and "checked in" to see what was going on. None of the geldings ever come up to console me but Brego did. Even if he can't be ridden, he may very well become my solace horse.)

When I returned, Dude had himself all sweated up and managed to mangle one of the corral panels. I won't even imagine what type of force he inflicted to bend a corral panel. Unfortunately, he managed to put a huge gash in his shoulder with no way to stitch it up either. I put some betadine on it. I wanted to doctor it this morning but I'd left everyone out in the pasture because it was 11pm when I got home last night to do chores. I'll see what creams and meds I should put on it. But in the end, Dude settled down for the first time ever after being alone for a few hours.Of course the heat played a big part in it. But I'll take what I can get.

So now I'm left with a pasture waiting for the herd but I need to go back out, add an extra strand of electric, a more powerful charger, and add flags to the entire fence (or at least where it's practically buried in canary grass or move the fence out of the canary grass and make the pasture smaller). Either way, in 100 degree weather, I don't want anyone out there. I can sneak over there and mess with the fence for a few minutes at a time. I don't want someone to drive a distance and then work their butts off only to get sick. I've been sick from the heat; it's not pretty.

I'm simply ready for a break from this heat. I want to dance in the rain. This heat is bringing out my bad temper and melting away what little "filter" I might have in toning down what I shouldn't say. So if I say something you don't approve of, I'm sorry. But it's the heat and the stress of everything and I now simply can't handle it. I've put myself into "timeout" a few times this month already. I'm betting it'll happen more and more if the heat doesn't break. Keep your fingers crossed that we'll get some rain and cooler weather soon. Otherwise, I may not post much more until I can be more positive.