Wild Weather Riding Woes?

by Karyn "K.C." Cowdrey

We’ve certainly had a crazy week in the Northwest region as far as winter weather goes.

I normally make an hour-long drive each way to ride my young gelding four times a week, but with this cold, snowy snap it’s been a challenge due to road conditions. My rule of thumb is if the road it not a total sheet of ice, I will go. I have a 4x4 and studded snow tires and am used to driving in the snow.

The road conditions have been less than ideal road this week, and I did skip a day of riding, but for the most part I found that if I just arranged my schedule to try to ride during daylight hours, the roads were not too bad. If I bundled up, I did not even turn into a human iceberg.

What kinds of winter riding adventures have you been having? Have you found the perfect way to keep fingers and toes toasty and warm, yet still have feel on the reins?

Share your winter horse survival tips with us all. In the meantime, bundle up and ride!

A Visitor from Back East

by Karen Pickering

A big Northwest welcome to our new webmaster! Christy West arrived Thursday to meet the NWHS team face to face after a few months of working via email and the Internet. We are truly excited to have a person with her many talents working on our website. Christy has worked with The Horse magazine for many years, and her experience as an editor, writer and webmaster makes her the perfect fit for our growing website presence. Along with the efforts our current staff has put forth, Christy's contribution is going to make nwhorsesource.com the best resource in the Northwest for all your community information and horsey news! Horse care tips, training tips, stories and news….they're all here.

Christy left on Saturday morning with a snow storm on her tail. I hope everyone is faring well in the cold, wherever you are, and enjoying the snow…we don’t get much. At least it’s dry (no mud!) and forces us to snuggle to keep warm.

Have a wonderful, beautiful week. Keep checking back for more updates and additions to our website, and if you haven't already checked it out, take a look at our new digital edition! The December issue will be up by the end of the week, and starting in January the digital editions will go live each month at the same time as the magazine is released.