By Sara Fogliano

In the last article, I wrote about how the cold weather affects horse chores. Well, now I have to deal with the mud the warm weather has created.

Our property is relatively flat, so the water does not run off. As the weather started to warm and melt the 18 inches of snow, the water could not be absorbed as there was still 30 inches of frost underneath. So then there was two inches of standing water on top of the two to three inches of mud.

This created a real mess.

As I entered the paddock through the electric fence I was balancing hay in one hand and opening the gate with the other hand. I walked through and turned around to latch the gate. Molson tried to sneak up behind me even though I could the splash-slurp, splash-slurp as he slowly made his way towards me through the mud. Just as I turned, he grabbed a mouthful of hay. I yelled, and he bolted off through the mud that splattered all over my jeans, shirt and face.

After that, I tried to tromp through the mud and the muck so I could put the hay in the dry parts of the paddock. However, my boot and I disagreed and my boot got sucked off and somehow I ended up unbalanced and unable to put my boot back on without dropping the hay. So in the end, my clean, white socks ended up very muddy and the hay ended up in the mud, too.

Well, mucking stalls is another thing that is on my list of chores. It’s very important to muck stalls because the urine can cause a hoof bacterial infection known as thrush and if conditions are very bad the urine will break down the walls of the hoof. Plus, would you like to sleep in your own manure and urine?

Mucking stalls is like an art (yes, this may sound funny, but it is). It is not just seeing piles of manure and picking it up. You also have to pick up urine without wasting a lot of shavings because shavings take a long time to break down into organic soil and it is more cost efficient. With every stall I muck, I make sure there is no manure or urine left in that stall before the horse has to come back in at night.

The work just doesn’t stop there. When I am pushing the wheelbarrow through the mud after mucking the stalls, the wheelbarrow gets stuck in the mud. Then I try to use twice the amount of force to get it out of the mud, but again my boot disagrees, makes me slip and tip the wheelbarrow.

Well, at least the hose is not frozen.

With the weather starting to warm up, I was able to take my friend Stephanie on a six-and-a-half mile drive last weekend. It was great getting away from our parents to talk about stuff. This is the payoff for all the hard work – being with my two best friends.