We had a scare this week with a brush fire on a trail across the road (some asshole thought it was a good idea to leave smoke bombs tied to a tree 🙄), it was fortunately contained quickly but we were offered a temporary paddock on the other side of town so my sister in law and I decided to evacuate our mares just as a precaution (especially because the smoke had them breathing pretty hard.) I sure as hell did not have time for this mess this week but having past experience with wildfires, and seeing as there’s only one route of escape from where our horses are kept, we thought it was better safe than sorry.

We brought them home them home the next morning once we felt the risk had mostly passed but honestly I’m glad we made the trip because it was great practice for future emergencies. We don’t trailer out very often and my mare especially hates trailers so the opportunity to practice was great. We were able to figure out what worked well for getting them loaded quickly in a pinch, and which trailers the horses did best in (as we had two available to us.) Also learned just how hard it is to spot a dark horse at night in a pitch black pasture 🤣. We were lucky we didn’t need to rush, it took a good three hours to load three horses and drive them across town, but bringing them home we had it all figured out and each one loaded in about 5 minutes with minimal drama.

Ponies were very happy to get home and were quite tired today when I checked in on them. I think my mare was feeling a little on edge still since it’s still very smoky from another nearby fire, because when she saw me pull in today she walked towards me, laid down and rolled, then snorted and sighed a bunch like she finally felt she could relax now that I was there. She’s very protective of her pasturemate and is quite the little boss mare so I think she’s been on high alert with everything going on.

Anyway, practice your trailer loading and evacuation plans. It’ll come in handy someday.