The Fabled Christmas Pony: April showers bring May

...flurries?

I am not a fan of today's weather at all. Well, I was until I wasn't. It was a steady drizzling rain all day, and I actually love the rain. It makes it really feel like spring. Of course this evening as we arrived at the farm, the raindrops were turning to big, wet snowflakes. I brought Jazz in planning to check on her feet (which have been a little thrushy lately, but nothing serious), and it was apparent she was weird. She looked soaking wet, but that's to be expected following almost an entire day of rain. It wasn't till I caught her and started trying to get the halter on that she seemed weird. She was being kind of uncooperative of putting the halter on, and not in a way that I would have considered normal for her. I immediately thought of a time last summer that she was fussing about putting her halter on and she had a big puncture on her lip that I couldn't see from the left side.

(Warning: slightly gross picture)

This was it. It was super hard to clean because she REALLY did not want me to touch it. It must have stung something fierce. Note for clarity: this was not today. This was last summer.

Luckily, I checked and saw nothing that looked out of the ordinary. So, I got the halter on and tied and started walking her in and that was when it got really strange. She was hesitant to move and actually sidepassed about half the distance of the pasture. I'm not sure exactly what that was all about, my best guess was that she was just really cold and her muscles were stiff. About halfway down she started mostly walking normally, but I could see she was shivering badly.

I brought her into the barn intending to pick her feet quickly and head straight into the arena, but she was shivering so much that I couldn't have even done that. I toweled off the water that was beaded on her back, and headed to the arena. I trotted her to get her muscles warm, lunging her both directions until she stopped shivering and actually seemed to get warmed up a little. Then I pulled out the blanket I've owned for almost two years and never used until today. Jazz has always been kind of a goober about blankets (not that she's had to wear many), so it took a while doing groundwork and pulling it on and off to get it settled on her. Once it was on properly and buckled, I lunged her again so she could really get the feel of it. She seemed to perk right up. She was trotting along very happily and seemed to really enjoy herself.

Plus tell me she isn't just too freakin cute in her little blue blanket.

I gave her a few oats and walked her indoors a few more minutes before letting her go. It's too bad I didn't have my camera ready because it was just hilarious once I'd let her go. The other horses were much more concerned about Jazz's new blanket than she was. They were all crowded around her biting at and investigating the blanket. It was funny because Jazz was trying to be annoyed an push them away like the lead mare she thinks she is. It was like she was trying to assert herself but they were all too curious to remember they're supposed to be listening to her.