SPECIAL EDITION:

RAIN:

We woke early this warm Sunday morning to the renewed sound of pouring rain.  It had been raining all night, but the weather was making one last big effort before it ran out of water over the Essex countryside.

It was that heavy, straight down gets everything properly soaking type of rain, the type that makes me happy I cut my lawn yesterday!

These are a few shots of what we imagine rain in July might look like: sunny, hot with beautiful bay Trakehners galloping about in glee...

The boys were in their yard, partially under the eves of the roof of the stable block, munching hay they had spread all-over.  I made their breakfasts and took the decision to put their bowls in their stables so they could eat out of the heavy wet rain, because I thought that might be a happy situation.

They went in of course, because nothing stands between any of us WW lot and a meal, BUT they weren't happy. They were anxious and alert.

Henry took each mouthful and ran to the open door to chew in an on-duty fashion.

Very twitchy, my boys were keeping an eye out, trying to hear what was going on, trying to see what was coming.

It occurred to me this high alert status is because of the rain.  Because the sounds are different, directionality has been altered by the rain and the vision is impaired due to the curtains of water falling straight down.

Then I realised something I always wonder about: Tom & Henry never come into their stables when its raining, they prefer to be out in the middle of the field, with their bums to the driving rain, this could be why...sound and sight.

You can see from this mornings 'real' photos how hard it is to even spot the boys through the driving rain.  It's hot but very wet.

Yesterday this field was dry and dusty, this deluge happened overnight.

Notice from this photo how T&H's ears are facing different directions, each taking responsibility for a direction as they would in the wild herd and you can spot this out riding too.  We often think the horse behind is grumpy because he's behind...but it's because his job is listening behind. The more forward horse takes the front with his ears forward, the horse behind in charge of sideways and behind.  here they have all directions covered so nothing can surprise them...except John who went out in the rain to take these pictures!

Inside they have walls to stop sounds travelling, to muffle the noises of possible predator encroachment.  Outside they have a 360 view and can use their vision hand in hand with their hearing to know exactly what's going on around them.

Horses have evolved to survive, they don't care about being wet, their primary mission is safety, above all other things.  It's this quest for being the safest that they can be that we need to be more in-tune with.  Just because I wouldn't care to eat out in the rain, T&H don't mind a bit, they just need that feeling of safety.

T&H wont go into the yard or their stables now until the rain has abated, and all fear of missing a threat has passed.  This is how horses are.

Now the grass is another matter.....growing fast and wet and muddy too now...we're going to have to adapt to these climate changes.  keeping our horses out more to keep them happy, learning to deal with mud fever in July, keeping an eye on their weight because of the elevated speed of growth of their primary fibre source: grass.