Rachel Wise: Spring has sprung and it's cold out there!

Have I told you lately I've gone off you? Photo / Supplied

It is a lifestyle? Or a life sentence? Having even the smallest of lifestyle blocks can doom the unwary to a life of unruly sheep, petulant pigs, downright despicable chickens, unfortunate episodes involving electric fences, and water pumps that break down on the Friday evening of long weekends. Mostly
href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503462&objectid=12267387" target="_blank">I saw the first sign of spring at our place last weekend.

It was a 3-year-old child dressed in nothing but mismatched far-too-big gumboots dancing in a mud puddle.

There was a smaller version dressed in a teddy bear onesie asleep in a washing basket in the middle of my bed.

Of the two, I think the teddy bear-clad child was the more sensible, given that spring has, for the most part, been freezing and wet.

Not being a penguin, I'm not a fan of being cold and wet.

My horses and dogs, however, love to channel their inner penguin, despite my best efforts.

Because I am cold, they have to wear extra layers.

Each morning when I go out to feed my horses I have to make a decision ... is it going to warm up? If it is, I have to take two layers of covers off my horses.

But how much will it warm up? Should I just take one layer off ... or maybe it will stay cold, in which case I should leave both layers on. Or what if it gets even colder? Should I maybe add a layer?

It takes a lot of thought. Each layer has at least two buckles, two long and elusive straps with clips and two more straps with interlocking metal clasps designed especially to be annoying. Some of them also have velcro.

Chalkie's waterproof layer, just to add an extra challenge, has a bit that covers his neck and adds three extra buckles and what feels like an extra 20 kilos. And he's tall.

Philip, on the other hand, is so short I have to kneel down to dress or undress him. I nearly need one of those lying-down trollies mechanics use to get under your car. But with mud tyres.

Taking all the rugs off is the easy part - sort of.

First you have to get the horse to stand still. Then all the buckles, velcro, straps and clips have to be undone in a specific order from front to back. Then - and this is important - you clip the long, elusive straps back to their D rings.

Pay attention, I will be asking questions later.

Rachel Wise.

Then you slide the covers off and hang them somewhere your horse can't chew them, trample them or shred them.

Or, in Bryn's case, you slide the covers off and he takes one look at them and pretends he's never seen them before, they are terrifying, bound to attack him, and he has hysterics. See - easy.

Then in the evening as it gets dark and cold, you get to do it all over again in reverse.

Is it a cold enough night for two covers? Three? Or will they be too hot. One? No, it's going to be a frost. Two ...

It's now I face the fact that the rugs that slid so easily off the horses this morning have to be hefted back up onto them. And did I mention Chalkie is tall?

I bundle up his rug and heave it. It gets about halfway up, then slides onto the ground where it absorbs an extra 2kg of mud.

A second attempt gets half the rug over him, then I heave the rest up and run round the other side to pull it into place.

I reach for the back straps and they aren't there. Because I have the cover on sideways.

About then is when it starts to rain.

Cover off, bundle, throw.

Question time: Did I remember to clip those long back straps back to their D-rings? If yes, no problem.

If no, one of them will swing wildly through the air and whack me in the face.

Chalkie quite likes getting his rugs on.

Philip hates his - it makes him itchy - and he hares off to the back-most corner of the paddock.

Sunny and Nigel are resigned to it.

Bryn has never seen his before, he claims with a loud snort, and thinks it could quite possibly be poisonous. Mind you it's nearly dark by now, and raining, and I am trying to approach him while draped in two rugs and trailing a lead-rope. All he can see of me is my gumboots. He does have a point.

But it's not just the horses who need to be bundled against the cold. Once I get inside I am freezing and so, by association, are the dogs.

They need their jackets on.

They don't think so. But three chihuahuas are no match for someone that's just wrangled covers onto five horses.

Besides which, a friend has recently given me her dog's outgrown jackets. Or should I say ... costumes.

You can get all sorts of outfits for dogs.

Which kind of explains why there is a small dog dressed in a grey hoodie glowering at me from his basket, and a small green furry dinosaur and a multi-coloured unicorn sitting together under the dining table, looking a lot like they are plotting against me.