Chimi the PrickHole

Yesterday morning I awoke to a buttload of snow that I wasn't quite expecting. Previous snow forecasts that I had read said we would see about an inch of snow and the forecast that I had looked at  before going to bed seemed to only predict snow for approximately 2 hrs total during the night. Whoops. It had started snowing at 3am and pretty much snowed all night and morning and stopped sometime around lunch. We ended up with ~4" of snow by the time is stopped!

Wed weather at 9pm... gah!

Because I thought we were getting just a small dusting of snow I decided to keep the horses out. They have warm, waterproof blankets with a neck cover so I knew that they would stay dry and warm even if it did snow more than predicted. When I went down to feed I figured they would want to stay in their stalls for the morning and then I'd let them back out once it stopped snowing. So I lugged 3 water buckets down to the barn filled with warm water for each of the ponies and dropped 3 giant flakes of hay into each stall. After finishing their breakfast Marley and Arrow were quite content standing in their stalls eating the giant pile of hay, Chimi on the other hand was not.

In other news it snowed in my barn... it's never snowed this much on the tiny aisle before! Guess the wind was blowing...

Chimi ate his breakfast like normal and I offered him his bucket of warm water like we do every day. He took a few sips and then stared off into the distance on high alert in his stall. When I wouldn't let him out he started cribbing and I tried to get him interested in his hay. Normally if he has hay in front of him he doesn't crib but he had zero interest in his hay. He would walk a circle around in his stall, crib, stare intently off into the distance out his stall door, crib some more, maybe take a bite of hay, walk another circle, crib some more, stare, snort, crib, pace, crib, snort, pace, crib, etc. With the sudden change in temperature I was worried that he was going to work himself into a colic so I opened his stall door to see if he wanted to go out. He immediately walked out of his stall and made the right hand turn that takes him out to his pasture. I then had to let Arrow and Marley out of their stalls so no one would be left alone in the barn or outside. (I currently only have 3 horses at home instead of 4 like I have had in the past... Finn moved to a new barn with the girl that's leasing him...yay!)

Yummm.... must share hay pile with Arrow

Once Chimi was out he took a big sigh of relief and immediately calmed down. I tossed out more hay outside and Chimi quite happily settled down to eat a hay pile with Arrow while Marley looked annoyed that she had to be outside in the pouring snow. Poor Marley kept following me around the pasture as I dumped hay and de-snowed their water trough. She looked at me like "Why are we outside when we could be dry inside??" I gave her extra kisses on her frosty face and apologized for her brother being a prick-hole and making them stay outside in the snow!

Poor Marley, following me around hoping I'll let her inside

After spending all day in the snow and with the real feel hovering around 15 because there was a steady wind blowing, Chimi did come into his stall for dinner and decided to stay there for the night. Marley was quite relieved that he finally came to his senses so she didn't have to spend another night out in the snow!