Monthly Archives: September 2010

Three weeks ago, I rode Fanny bareback in the Broke Tree Corral.  Terribly hot.  She is such a fine horse.  But she was moody after the ride.  The summer is hard on us all.

Sweet Hija had a problem with flies, dust and heat.  She is nearly five months pregnant with a filly (ultrasound verified) and was having a tussle with summer heat.  To the vet, I have taken her.  When I loaded her, she first balked, then I backed her up, then brought her forward and she came into the trailer, knowing good medicine was at the end of her journey.  She, too, is a good horse.

A few showers had fallen before the change.  Not many, but enough to keep a pale-green cast to the grass, inducing the remuda to browse in pasture.

Then, last week, about Wednesday, the summer broke.  Temperatures went down below a hundred degrees and the sky cleared of summer haze.  You know the haze of summer.  (Oh, how much we want clarity.)  Behavior lightened.  The dark before the dawn was cool, a time when I walk my companion-dogs.

Thunderstorms walked about, shafts of rain as legs, and at night they gave strobe lights to the sky.  At daybreak following storms, horses nickered in tones of cordiality, neither rushed nor anxious.  They sensed a difference.  And I fed more quietly, pausing to feel cool air flowing down the hill to our feed bins.  All seemed lighter, cooler, last Wednesday.

The summer has broken.