Horse trainer shaves phone number into horses' coats

If you’re anything like me, your days will follow a fairly simply structure helped by a degree of planning.

Put simply, I, like many others, usually make a schedule for any upcoming week, listing things I have to do, things I have to remember, etc, etc. Nothing too heavy-duty, you understand.

One thing not on my list (thankfully) is to make arrangements in preparation for a hurricane. Of course, that’s a luxury not shared by those in the path of Hurricane Idalia, expected to strike land along the Gulf Coast of Florida this week.

I’m sure we can all agree that it’s a terrifying prospect for anyone to have to deal with. It’s also providing a headache of gigantic proportions for horse owners expecting to be affected when Idalia makes landfall.

Madison Wallraf, a horse trainer at Olive Acres Equestrian Center, revealed that the horses themselves seem to know something is awry.

“It is a little bit nerve-racking,” Wallraf said. “They definitely know the pressure in the air is different.”

For her part, she’s planning to put her horses in a hurricane-proof barn to give them the best protection possible.

“They are block-style barns, they have protective doors and really help with any high winds,” she explained. “I’ve always had fears of tree limbs, puncturing and horses getting lost. We have show jumpers, so they will jump out of the pastures if they’re scared.”

Another horse owner, Jennifer Robinson, who lives in Citrus County, is taking a different approach. A photo she posted of her ongoing preparations went viral earlier this week.

Robinson wants to let her horses run free on her property during the storm, but she’s taken rather ingenious steps to ensure that the animals can be found and brought back to her in the event of Hurricane Idalia causing any destruction that might facilitate the horses being able to run away.

“I felt shaving the phone number in their coat was the best foolproof way that if they did get out, someone would be able to at least read the phone number,” Robinson explained.

Needless to say, Wallraf and Robinson are just two of many individuals anxiously awaiting Hurricane Idalia, reckoned to be a storm approaching Category 4 status.

Multiple counties across Florida have been placed in a state of emergency, while evacuations have been ordered in at least 30 of them as a result of fears that walls of water will surge inland when Idalia sweeps in from the sea.

“Storm surge of this magnitude is not something we’ve ever seen in this part of Florida in any of our lifetimes,” Governor Ron DeSantis said during a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.

“So, please, please take the appropriate precautions.”

Please join us in sending prayers for those living in the path of Hurricane Idalia.

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