A wet morning, turning windy, and colder.\u00a0 I would prefer, with a forecast of a hard frost in the night, to have both horses in some kind of horse clothing.\u00a0 But Tigger accepted a cover only last year, briefly, after his accident, when he was badly enough hurt not to resist as usual.\u00a0 As soon as he was better, he would not allow me to put it on.\u00a0 And he survived without it, of course.\u00a0 When I bought Rags, it was already warming up and no need for a blanket or even rain sheet.<\/p>\n
But today I decided to see if Rags, temporarily confined in his stall with a couple of flakes of hay so that he couldn’t poach from Tigger and then go eat his private store, would accept the rain sheet.\u00a0 A handsome tan and brown plaid, which had been Kallie’s.\u00a0\u00a0 Rags was clearly not familiar it, but let me rub him with the folded object and then allowed me to drape it gradually over him, in a somewhat disorganized way…slowly and talking about it, as he munched hay and looked back now and then to see what idiocy his hay-provider had come up with next.\u00a0 And so it went on (and I didn’t have a camera with me)\u00a0 and he went on eating hay until Tigger, not happy with the reappearance of the rain sheet, left the barn, and I let Rags out of his stall.\u00a0 Rags followed Tigger out, apparently undisturbed that the covering, a little long for him, flapped a bit in the wind.<\/p>\n
Tigger was aghast!\u00a0 What had happened to his black and white friend?\u00a0 No more black and white but this, this almost monochrome THING on him that flapped and made a little noise and…AGGGGG.\u00a0\u00a0 It was a horse, certainly, but…WHAT horse?\u00a0\u00a0 Out of the monochrome was a black head in front, black tail behind, and four white legs.\u00a0\u00a0 He pulled himself up into full Arab outline: arched neck, tail high,\u00a0 poised for either fight or flight, and approached Rags with great caution…first WHAT are you?\u00a0 And then WHO are you?\u00a0 His nostrils flared, flattened, flared again, fluttering in and out.\u00a0\u00a0 Is it YOU?\u00a0 Could this possibly be YOU?\u00a0 Rags?\u00a0 My friend?\u00a0 Oh!\u00a0 Oohh, RAGS! There you are!<\/p>\n
He had to go all around Rags, warily sniffing at the rain sheet.\u00a0 Both sides, the tail flap, and then forward again. \u00a0 When the two of them were nose to nose, Tigger’s pose of dramatically arched neck and Rags’ lower one was so…adorably cute.\u00a0\u00a0 But it wasn’t that cold, and when I ran a hand under the rain sheet, Rags was warming up fast (too fast; in another ten minutes he’d have been sweating) so I took the rain sheet off and Rags stayed out in the wind with no sign of distress.\u00a0 Rags eats a LOT of hay, and has a longer winter coat than Tigger.\u00a0 So though he’s shorter, he’s a heat engine.\u00a0 But, since Rags will accept having the rain sheet put on, if we get serious cold again, I know I can put a cover on him.\u00a0 And if I put the rain sheet on and off every day “for practice” maybe Tigger will decide it’s not utterly evil. After all, Tigger spent most of the rainy morning in the barn with Rags. Willingly.\u00a0 Even when the rain was making serious noise inside the barn (metal roof, no insulation.)<\/p>\n
Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A wet morning, turning windy, and colder.\u00a0 I would prefer, with a forecast of a hard frost in the night, to have both horses in some kind of horse clothing.\u00a0 But Tigger accepted a cover only last year, briefly, after his accident, when he was badly enough hurt not to resist as usual.\u00a0 As soon Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,16],"tags":[49,17],"class_list":["post-656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses","category-life-beyond-writing","tag-horses","tag-life-beyond-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":659,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions\/659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}