This is the mud room door which I used when I was feeding the horses during the storm. Good thing it opens inward. The stockade fence to the side of the photo is five feet high. The dog door is buried beneath the drift beside the door. Lody, our Smooth Collie, always uses the dog door, and it took me a while to convince her that there was no way she was going to be able to burrow her way out and that she had to use the regular door. She is one of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever known, but not necessarily the brightest.
I dug around the barn enough to let Lily and Rags out of their stalls. Smoke was already out of the barn, since one of this little eccentricities is that he cannot be shut in a stall. He will batter his way out in what is apparently a panic attack. He doesn’t mind being in a small area like the hay aisle where he spent the storm, as long as he has a way out. Fortunately, the winds were blowing from the north and west, so the hay aisle door which faces east was sheltered.
I had to open Rags’ stall first, and Lily became sufficiently frantic to get out that I decided it would be safest to lead her out through the hay aisle since it took me about thirty minutes to clear the outside gate to her stall. Both horses celebrated by galloping around and then rolling in the fresh snow before settling to eat some hay.