Moves

So there was a lot of excitement around here yesterday. First, those yearling ponies with their shaggy manes moved into our pasture. I know that Fiesta is supposed to be my arch-rival for the glamour position here, but I felt sorry for her, since Harley was being bossy and chasing her around. She can run pretty fast tho! Then the lady walked my mom Tudi and my little brother by our field and put them out in the pasture next to ours. Then she came by again with Haylie and her baby and then she went the other way with two of those bay mares -- the big tall one and the one with the funny face -- and put them in the back field. And then she came by with my dad Bob and put him in the field with the new bay mares. Bob wanted to be happy, but he didn't think the bay mares liked him very much, so he was being cautious. And anyway, he had to check out every inch of that pasture to make sure that there had been no intruders in the months that he has been spending up by the barn. So there was a lot of noise, with Taca and her filly calling their departed friends and the bay mares upset about their buddies leaving them. And of course, Bob just generally makes a racket to let everyone know he's there and that he is a macho guy. So now it is quiet because things have settled down.

Lafleur

Yesterday, the old horse who lives in the pasture next to us wasn't feeling good and didn't want to eat his breakfast when the lady brought it out for him. His breathing sounded funny too. Another lady came in the afternoon and looked at the old horse and gave him some shots. She tried to put a long, clear, wiggly thing in his nose, but he didn't like that. So then she left. After the rest of us ate our hay for dinner, he went and laid down in his pasture. And he didn't get up again. His mares were sad and kept calling him. The lady came out to look at him in the dark and she could see that he wasn't breathing. So then today she went to a hill in his pasture and dug a great big hole with that orange machine and put him in it. So now he can stay with his mares all the time.

maneless

So yesterday, the lady shows up with these pointed shiny things. We all ran over to see if she had good stuff to eat, but she didn't. She walked over to my sister Gyspy and made the things go "scritch, scritch" along Gypsy's neck. And all of Gypsy's hair fell off -- her whole mane, just gone! Then she went to other ponies and made the noises and their manes fell off too! I wasn't sure if I wanted to have her do that to my mane, since I am not sure if the minimalist mane is in fashion this fall, but she came over and next thing I knew, it was off! But my mane is fuzzy and fluffy, so she didn't make it as short as some of the other ponies. And Toby really wanted his mane to fall off, but she didn't do anything to his, maybe because it was short already. Sienna just ran around and said no one was touching her blonde mane. I didn't know Sienna was so vain. Then the lady went out and made the manes fall off those big bay horse mares too. So I guess it is the fashion after all. The lady says now we look like polo ponies and you KNOW how glamorous they are! I am going to include some pics of us ponies eating out of the boxes. You can't see all our manes too good, because most of us have our heads in the boxes.

boxes

So things have not been very exciting for us ponies. We are stuck in our regular pasture without any nice green grass. We do not get to explore any new places. And we have those stupid boxes that the lady puts our hay in so we can't eat it fast like we want to. The boxes have a net thing that lays on top of the hay, so we grab it with our teeth and try to yank it out. That was working pretty good on two of the boxes because then we were able to move the square wooden thing that holds the net thing in. So we could lift it up and eat the hay underneath it. And we have one hanging net thing that we were able to pull down, but it didn't help with getting at the hay any better. The lady nailed that board back up. And it seems like every day she comes back out and makes a lot of noise with little tools and makes changes to the boxes. Of course, we try to help her, but she doesn't appreciate our help. We dump little shiny metal things out on the ground and we walk on the boards. She should stop messing with those boxes and just throw our hay on the ground so we can eat it. Or she should bring us carrots. The least she could do is take me over to the white hill so I could get my fuzzy coat brushed. She has been taking those big horses to the white hill instead of us ponies. Today she took Jewel there and then she got on her back and rode her out the gate. Jewel is always worried about stuff that the rest of us don't see. She wasn't snorting as much today, but right outside of the gate suddenly whoosh!!!--- she was bolting away from the hill like it was going to eat her. But she stopped after about ten ponies lengths. Then she snorted and rolled her eyes at the hill, but I don't know what she was upset at. Maybe it was that little bossy dog in the green truck thing. Or maybe the side of the white hill was flapping. Anyway, she had to walk back into the hill and back out and all around outside there. She was a little mad about it and kept shaking her head. So then the lady put her back out with those other big horses and brought Mari into the white hill too. She didn't ride Mari out of the hill. She just rode her around inside. Mari is not worried about everything like Jewel is. But the other mares that live with Mari yell for her. Us ponies are not like that. If one of us goes to the white hill, the other ponies just watch the lucky one go. I hope next time I get to go the white hill!

Puzzle boxes

Us ponies just love the new puzzle boxes that the lady brought out here for us. I thought it was going to be hard to get the hay out of them, and we would all just be fighting and biting each other (okay, so actually biting other ponies is fun, it is only not fun when other ponies bite me) when she first brought hay out and put it in the boxes. But it turns out, the objective is to remove the net thing that is keeping us from grabbing mouthfuls of hay. See, the box is wooden and then it has this heavy net stretched on a metal frame that goes inside and lays on top of the hay. Last year, we would just grab that stupid net and drag it out of the box and stomp on it. So now there is an extra wooden frame that sits over top of the box. It is tied down to the top or has some kind of metal snaps on it. We discovered we can slide that frame over a little and by grabbing the net with our teeth and pulling it many many times, we can get part of it to stick up and then we can stick our heads under it and eat the hay. It makes a lot of noise banging around. We think it is so much fun, that even after the hay is gone, we pull out that nasty net thing until we can get it on the ground and stomp on it. Last night, the lady brought a different kind of net that she hung on the fence where it is solid boards. It is green on the back and has the net on the front. The hay goes on the inside. Ha! I am pretty sure we can tear that thing up in no time. The lady is definitely finding fun stuff for us to do!

Hey, Hay!

Wow! We had lots of white stuff everywhere and some is still out here. It was cold and windy and there were no bugs at all! But today the sun was out, so most of the snow left. Now we have mud. The gates are closed to our outlying pastures, so we are stuck here inside this regular board fence where there is hardly any grass. The lady showed up yesterday and put frames of wood on top of the boxes that she set in our field back a long time ago when there was a lot of snow. She puts hay in those boxes and it is way hard for us to get it out. We used to just have hay laying on the ground, so we ate it really fast and one winter we had gigantic round bales which were really fun-- we tore them apart and rolled in them and had a grand time! Now we are stuck with these stupid boxes. The lady put some hay in the boxes tonight and we were happy about that, but we couldn't even pull the net thing out that covers the hay because of the new frame things on top. So we have to pull pieces of hay out a little at a time. It takes forever. But at least we have hay. I hope the grass comes back soon.