Dogs, Horses and Wind

I got home from work today with a couple of expectations. First was that my husband would be in a class tonight and not home. Second, we were supposed to have lots of rain. Third, is that I had to rotate the animals tonight.

Our wonderful labweiler (part lab - part rottweiler - mostly goofy) decided to let his lab parts shine lately. He is escaping the fence where we keep him during the day. To correct this temporarily, we will put them in the horse pasture. It's fenced with bull wire and is about 2 acres of land. He should be happier in there for a little while. We closed off part of the cow pasture and put the horses in there. This is good because it was time to rotate pastures anyway. The 2 problems with this pasture are that it is leased for cattle (we have permission to rotate occasionally as long as the horses don't eat it all to the roots.) and there is not much shelter from anything in there. We build the loafing shed in the horse pasture.

So I decided the weather was going to miss us so the kid and I went out and got the horses and started grooming them. As we were grooming, it started thundering. We picked up the pace. I asked the kid if she wanted to go ahead and put them in the new pasture or wait until tomorrow morning in case it storms. We decided we don't get up early enough to switch pastures in the morning. So first, I close the pasture off, then the horses are released. Then we have to deal with the feed. Their feed containers are clipped to the fence on the horse pasture and have to be moved to the new one. And we have to feed and we have to water.

Meanwhile, remember the thunder? It's getting worse and now there's even lightening to go with it and the wind picks up. We got through with every thing except the water as the worst of the storm is beginning. It was around 8pm. I left the water running and ran the kid inside so we could listen to the fire dept scanner. As I turned it on they announced that there was a TORNADO warning for our county and specifically that they have sighted funnel clouds in our town!! We got flashlights, cell phones, and my kid's mattress and huddled on the floor by my bed for a while. The tornado touched down southeast of our town and we are west of the town.

The horses are ok (no thanks to us moving them in the shelter-free pasture) and we had absolutely no damage at our house. Unfortunately, my husband, the firefighter, is out still helping with damage repair in our area. He was called out of his class to help.

It is now 11pm. The stars and moon are out and my household is safe even though he's still out.