Winter is Coming

And it looks like it might be another bad one. As long as it isn't as hellish as our first winter here, things will be all good. That winter the university was had a Snow Day, which it NEVER EVER does. That's how bad it was. We'll see.

The point is, I need to figure out what I'm going to do with myself and Cherry this winter. Last winter we kept riding, since for the most part it was just muddy and cold, not too much snow or ice. This winter may be different, but I do want to keep her in some sort of work.

We might be doing a lot of ground driving, since that doesn't involve enough work to actually sweat. The important thing, I believe, is to keep her moving. She doesn't do too much of that in her frozen paddock, understandably, so it's going to be up to me.

Arthritis doesn't take kindly to standing still or cold weather. She'll stay on the joint supplement through winter, but I may try to cut her back in the spring. It would be nice to only feed it half the year. Stuff's expensive.

One thing I am definitely going to devote myself to this winter is researching hoof care. Hopefully hoof growth will slow down and I won't have to keep trimming every other week. So I'm going to use the time to read up on technique and methods. What I do now is so unbelievably basic. Good thing Cherry doesn't have anything majorly wrong with her feet, just bad flares. I want to learn more "advanced" stuff, maybe something different to improve my trimming so that when everything thaws and hoof growth picks back up, I'll have a better approach.