Too Darn Hot

And with a sizzle and a sweat, summer seems to have dropped it's hot, sticky self upon us in New York. Yesterday was 80-90 degrees, today doesn't seem to be shaping up to be much cooler. Obviously anyone watching the Belmont Stakes horse race yesterday had to feel some empathy for those thoroughbreds. If I was Big Brown, I would have said, "$@#% this! I'm not running my tail off today!" too.

I was compelled to get some kind of a ride in. Monty handles the heat okay when he's fit and properly managed. He was comfortable in his stall with the fan blowing on him when I got there. Actually, the barn was cooler than the outside! I groomed, tacked up and took him out to the polo arena. All we did was walk for about 20 minutes as the sun blazed. Then we went up to the smaller ring behind the boarding barn. There are some trees there and a bit of shade so we trotted and cantered for all of 10 minutes. That was enough. We walked out and I untacked and took him for a nice soapy bath.

I love that first really good bath after a long winter. The wash stall where I board is outdoors. So the winter is long and dirty. There is an indoor wash stall in the medical barn but it's mostly for horses there for veterinary care. So when the weather gets hot, I can't wait to get in that outside wash stall and scrub,scrub,scrub!