Ride 33: Testing Late Afternoon Temps

Daylight Savings Time creates real difficulties for those who need training/riding schedules to mesh with open hours for other businesses at a distance.   It shifts the hours of useful light toward after-5pm, and removes those hours from before 8am, making mornings darker and evenings lighter.  Actual day-length changes only in response to the yearly circuit, but *useful* daylight–when it’s light enough to ride out in natural light but cool enough to avoid excessive heat stress on both horses and humans–is less, because morning light is cooler than later light. In the hottest part of our climate,  and with global warming, this is worse than some other places.

Many people owning and using horses also have day jobs, and cannot ignore the time-change’s effect on daylight and temperature available for riding.  Even for those without day jobs (or night jobs, for that matter), it’s necessary to attend to summer time when you need something from a business that opens and closes “an hour earlier” by sun time.  Medical and dental appointments, vet appointments, also factor in.  Before the time change, dawn came an hour later, and dusk was an hour earlier, so I could go feed at 7 am and be ready to ride by 8:30.    I was about to move to feeding at 6:30…and then it was pitch dark at 7.   Going out to feed before it was light enough to see snakes (and skunks) on the ground is not ideal.   Same with riding out.   I suppose, if you have a lighted indoor arena to ride in, it’s not as bad–but most people don’t have that.  Also, I wake most easily when the sky is lightening, a time that changes with the seasons.  Mornings are cooler, afternoons/evenings are hotter, and this intensifies as summer replaces spring.  Yesterday’s first-of-summer bout of mild over-heating symptoms for me, however, made a change necessary, and this early, the hours from 5:30 to 7:30pm are merely warm, not hot (later, these will be the peak-heat hours.)

I fed the horses at 4pm when it was beginning to cool from another 90F day, and they were still on their hay at 5pm.  I waited until they’d left the hay, about 5:45, and started the ride prep–catching Rags and closing the gate to keep Tigger outside, then grooming and tacking up Rags, and finally getting on him somewhere between 6 and 6:10 I think–I forget to check.  By then the temperature was distinctly cooler, but the sunlight was high enough.   We did the polework (he hit everything at least slightly) and then rode out.  My plan was for a shorter ride (not sure how far we’d get)  so we started up the east side of the Dry Woods (to pick up some shade from them)–also so I could check out the bluebonnet situation.   Yes, we have bluebonnets.  Only one or two flower spikes per larger plant, and not very tall, but bluebonnets.  We made a broad circuit of the east grass, then worked our way south, crossing the old ditch fairly upstream of where we had before, and riding along its south side, making a big circle in the slanting field that runs up to the construction yard, and back into the Near Meadow from its upper end, then “weaving” through the line of young bur oaks before returning for a final ride through the polework area.  In order to have a pocket that would carry the cellphone, I had to wear the riding tights with a cellphone pocket (my fake-denim riding tights have shallow pockets that don’t hold it safely) and those are the ones with a fleece lining.  So yes, my legs sweated, but it wasn’t too uncomfortable, just hard to get them out of the damp fleece.  The evening breeze was cooler every few minutes.

The full session was just a little under half an hour; we walked the whole time, and the temp by then was in the mid to low 80sF.  Rags went willingly and sweated only a little under the saddle and girth, not on neck, chest, or between his hind legs.  He seemed perfectly comfortable the whole time, and after the saddle came off he was no wetter under it than my leg was under where the cellphone had rested.  So this is a viable riding time for now, if it doesn’t get hotter.  I can’t feed much earlier than 4 because I’d rather feed when it’s not as hot–feeding is also when I clean the water tub(s) and refill them and the sun’s high enough to require the nose-guard where that growth was.

Later, when dusk comes around 9pm, the heat will still be in the mid-upper 90sF and in some spells will top 100F.  By then the morning “cool” hours will be more available, usually starting in the 80sF, occasionally (wonderfully) in the upper 70s.  But that’s probably a month away.   In the heat of summer, I feed the evening meal later and later–it’s better for them if they eat their hard feed below 100F, and they spend the hottest times in the shade of trees.   They come into the barn for water.  The barn itself, being metal, gets hot, but just having the water in its shade helps the water stay cooler.

So it was quite a successful ride, though the “out” part was shorter and covered less ground.  I enjoyed it, and didn’t have any problem with the temperature (shouldn’t, in the low-mid 80s!!) and was encouraged by the grass recovery in the burned area.  Will try to get pictures soon.   I was able to eat my supper about 7 pm and it was darkish.   Now it’s after 10:30 pm.  I still have stuff to do.  I didn’t make it into the city last week, and–having regained those 5 pounds–I’m going to need summer-weight riding pants that fit the size I am now, not the size I’d hoped to be by now.  One pound is already off, but one pair of summer-weight faux-denim won’t make it through the losing of the rest if I ride as often as I should.  It has to be line-dried (and I prefer line-drying for riding pants anyway) and won’t line-dry overnight as the night temps are still cool.  I also need the stuff to treat Rags’ seasonal itch and loss of black hair on his head and mid-back, two more slow-feed hay nets, and another “shedding” grooming tool.