From Sunny Skies to Snowy Rides

I'm always cold. I'll be at the barn at 8 am shivering in my down jacket, complaining about how freezing I am. People laugh and say that I live in Southern California, I don't even know what cold is. That's where they're mistaken.

When I was ten, my parents and I moved to Vienna, Austria. We hadn't even moved into our new apartment yet when I started barn hunting. It didn't take long until I found the perfect place; The kids were nice, the teacher was great, and the horses were fun. It didn't seem all that different from the barn I came from.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Needless to say, our first winter in Austria came as a bit of a shock to me. At first, I loved the cold. I loved the rain and the snow. My barn had two indoor arenas, so I didn't see how it could be a problem. After about a month, however, I started missing California's blue skies and sunshine.

Riding in the cold presented more challenges than I expected. Grooming and tacking up was made difficult by the fact that my fingers were numb, and I could hardly hold on to a hoof-pick let alone actually pick a horse's feet. The horses were always frisky in the cold, and the loud noise of raindrops on the tin roof of the arena didn't do much to calm them down. Every now and then a crack of thunder would ring through the sky, causing all the horses in the arena to take off galloping in different directions.

That wasn't even the worst part though. The worst part was getting off. Your body would generally warm up pretty quickly riding. That is, every part of your body except for your toes. I remember dismounting my pony and trying so hard to land gently on the floor. Every now and then, however,  I would swing off with too much force, and land hard, right on my toes. I remember feeling sure every time that happened that that was it - one of my toes had fallen off. My eyes would fill with tears and I would bite my lip in pain. Then it would go away, just like that. I would later on discover that all my ten toes were still, in fact, all attached.

The hardships of that day were soon forgotten, and an hour later I was already looking forward to my lesson the next day.