Rather than long rides in pleasant temperatures, we’re forced inside and the horses stand tail-to-wind in the paddock. Just as soon as the first buds appear on the mulberry, the wind starts to howl. And wind here has texture—because we live in the desert, the sky turns a weird redish tan color and sometimes visibility is severely diminished. It is not a good time to be out on a horse. Or to be a horse, especially a horse with bad allergies.

For as long as I’ve owned him (15 years), Volare has suffered a pretty severe form of allergic asthma in the spring. When I moved back east for a few years, he was a lot happier—the moisture or humidity or something, made his allergies pretty much go away. But here in New Mexico they’re worse than they’ve ever been. He has a hard time breathing, coughs terribly, and is generally miserable from March to August.

But a year or so ago, my vet took a little sample of his lung. It was an expensive and somewhat invasive procedure, but his cough had gotten worse and worse. He sent the tissue off to Tufts University, where the veterinary school has a procedure for determining lung tissue damage. Thankfully, it was what we’d always suspected—allergic asthma—and nothing more. So Volare got what everyone with asthma gets: an inhaler. Yes, a horse inhaler. It’s a pretty cool thing. It looks like a plastic bottle with a flexible rubber cup on the end. The cup goes over the nostril and the people-sized inhaler gets inserted into a rubber nozzle on the wide end of the bottle. Then you just “squirt” 12 times.

Although he’ll still cough a couple of times each ride, he’s much more energetic and happy since we’ve started his inhaler therapy. We had to bribe him the first few times, holding the cup over his nose while simultaneously feeding him peppermints, his favorite treat. But now, he relaxes and seems to actually enjoy the process. He breathes deeply and lets his head drop, breathing in the Flovent. And the rides, even with the terrible wind and all the allergens flying around, have been truly wonderful. I only wish they’d invented the inhaler 10 years ago.