Every Mare's Crazy 'Bout A Sharp Dressed Horse

There is an ongoing situation in Hillmomba that has plagued me for the past month. A mystery. A horse of another color.

Shortly after school let out for the summer, I sat alone in my Mansion, both boys off at summer school, and observed an eerie sight out my front window. The movement caught my eye first. It was something across the road in my neighbor's field. Something ghostly. Ethereal. It flowed. Not knowing that area as a hotbed of the supernatural, I sat up. I put on my glasses. And saw this:

At the time, he was walking back and forth by the fence. He's placid here. Feeding from his giant round hay bale that looks like a supersized Frosted Mini Wheat after an overnight bout of snow flurries. But there's no snow now. It was 99 freakin' degrees yesterday. And temperatures this month have hovered in the upper eighties and low nineties. So why is Seabiscuit wearing a sheet? What's the dealio? His equine buddy is also gussied up, all turned out, rockin' the blanket look. I don't see it in the photo, but they've been wearing masks, too. Like, full-face masks. A closed-in halter or sorts.

Yeah. They're not thoroughbreds just off the track. Not keeping warm in the paddock lest they catch a chill. It's summertime in mid-Missouri! Are they trying to make weight for a wrestling match? No silver rubber suits in their sizes? Trimming down for some upcoming nuptials not their own? Costumed as jousting contestants in the Middle Ages? WHO puts their horses in blankets and leaves them like that for thirty days?

The only solution that comes to mind is that their suits are intended to aid them in repelling insects. Horseflies, maybe, so they don't have to stand head-to-tail and swat each other in the face all day. Or perhaps their fabric armor keeps mosquitoes off of their warm, blood-filled bodies and protects them from a horrible equine blood-borne disease.

I don't get it? Any clues?