On the fourth day my husband Kenny was away from our ranch, I held my breath as I hooked up the complex array of hoses that deliver cold water for our horses to drink and warm water elsewhere to soak their daily mashes and wash their feed pans.

I flipped up the frost-free pump handle and… the water simply flowed out, smooth and clear. No explosive burst! No sudden spray of ice-cold water soaking my coat and gloves!

This was a singular moment of pure joy and relief. You see, during the previous four days, I had struggled to tame our water hoses and their “quick connect” adaptors.

“Go to my golf cart and get the groove-lock pliers,” Kenny advised via text after the first hose blowout. After fossicking about the storage area of the cart, I found the tool. Then I began working on the connector, following Kenny’s patient instructions. After some wrestling and cussing, I managed to get it apart. The next step was to thread the hose sections back together the old-fashioned way.

When I was done, the connection held—most of the time. But it failed often enough to fill my days with worry. There’s nothing quite like getting drenched by cold water in winter in New Mexico.

A long list

All of this got me to thinking about the hundred-and-one things Kenny does every day for our seven horses, regardless of weather. And boy, do we have weather, particularly in the winter, which can bring 45-mph winds, finger-numbing cold and sideways-blowing snow.  

On any given day, Kenny cheerfully accomplishes a variety of tasks on our ranch. Depending on the season, you may find him moving large square hay bales with the tractor from the hay shed to a purpose-built hay dispenser (that we jokingly call the Hay Pez), which spits out one large flake at a time.

His daily chores include weighing each horse’s hay serving with a hanging scale to ensure each ration size is appropriate. (We just spent two years helping one of our mares recover from laminitis and don’t want to ever go through that again.) To make things easier for our senior horses, Kenny also chops long-stemmed hay using a contraption he devised—powered by an upside-down lawn mower.

At feeding time, Kenny loads up our slow feeders. And at mash time, he separates the horses so they can eat in peace, then turns them out together. At the other end of the process, Kenny composts the manure, which we then use as fertilizer for our garden. He also makes weekly trips to town, 90 miles away, to replenish stores of feed, supplements and, yes, treats.

All that he does

The list goes on, as anyone who keeps horses at home knows. Kenny takes the reclaim, recast, repair and repurpose approach, an attitude that’s quite beneficial given our remote lifestyle. Kenny’s hard work and ingenuity make it possible for me to spend more time with the horses—grooming, groundwork, liberty exercises, riding and just enjoying their company. Kenny himself would rather be riding. But all his efforts to keep the ranch running smoothly are in addition to his full-time remote job as a software engineer.

Years ago, we trained and rode endurance together. Kenny even won a Best Condition award on a 50-mile event on our beloved Morgan mare Annakate. Since then, two serious horse mishaps have made him more cautious—“I can’t afford to get hurt,” Kenny says when I suggest we ride out together. He’s already taken one helicopter flight to a trauma center, and one is quite enough.

If you keep horses, you probably have a “Kenny” in your life, too. So on behalf of myself and horsekeepers everywhere, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to all the husbands, wives, significant others, buddies and other unsung heroes who help make our equestrian dreams possible.

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