Oops.

 Ugh.  The white stuff is back.  It was hard and hit us in our faces and we had to hide in our sheds.  There was wind blowing the white stuff everywhere.  All night and all day.  FINALLY, there was not as much wind and the white stuff got softer and fluffier and we came to get our Hey! but it was buried under white stuff and hard to dig out.  The lady was throwing more Hey! out with the buried Hey! but we had to dig it all out to make sure that the buried Hey! wasn't better than the new Hey!  So much for the nice green grass prospects.  What a disappointment!  

Yay!

 The white stuff that was on the ground is gone!  Hooray!  When the white stuff goes away, the nice grass will turn green!  Now everything is wet.   The ground is wet, the trees are wet and us ponies are wet.  But we are excited!  Yay!   

FREEDOM!

 As you know, when the ground has white stuff all over it, there is no nice green grass, so the lady has to bring us dried grass in square boxes that she calls Hey!  She used to drive the Hey! around in the back of the little green truck thing, but this year she is mostly dragging the Hey! to us on a little sled.  We are thinking maybe this is because she has been looking kind of like a very short pony at the end of a very wet summer, so maybe she is too heavy for the green truck thing to carry around. But for Marco and his band, she takes the Hey! back to their storage shed on a little flat trailer that the little orange noisy machine pulls around.  She doesn't do it that often because she takes enough Hey! for the ponies to eat for several days at a time.  So yesterday she went back there with the little orange machine and the big pile of Hey!, drove across the fence tape that is around their extended pasture that they don't use when it is cold and drove to the gate where Marco and his band were waiting.  They have done this a bunch of times before.  When she opened the gate, Marco ran through the gate and the little ponies ran through behind him.  The lady thought they would come back because she had Marco's dinner and there was all that yummy Hey!, but they didn't. The lady closed the gate on LaPerlita and then ran to grab the fence tape to pull it up, but she was too late,  The ponies made a pony-line for the far end of the pasture and jumped right over that tape on the ground, so the lady was only able to keep one of them -- little Mat, inside.  They were FREEE!!!!!!  The ponies were so happy.  Marco was flagging his tail in that Araby way that they have and boing-ing around the white field right next to us.  Of course, we live right next to them so we know them and didn't get too excited, but we watched as they ran back and forth across the field and made the young ponies in the next pasture over run to their fence and yell at them.  So the lady came hiking back up the hill to the barn where she got a bucket and a halter and she said things to the ponies that I should not repeat here.  The free ponies were happy to be eating old grass under the white stuff in the field instead of Hey!, but they were okay with the lady walking over to them and putting the halter on Marco and taking him back to his pasture.  The other ponies said "See ya!" and did not follow Marco, so the lady had to make several trips to lead each pony back to their regular pasture.  Even my mom Tudi was happier to stay in the field eating old grass all by herself until the lady asked her to come home for dinner. So THAT was very exciting!  And we are thinking the lady might be able to ride the little green truck thing again if she keeps up with that exercise.           

Horse chestnuts

 The big black dog is really weird.  All dogs are kind of weird compared to ponies, but this one is especially strange.  You know, he lives in the red barn with the little white dog and the lady that feeds us Hey!  He comes along with the lady, but the little white dog has not been along while the white stuff is on the ground.  So you know how when the lady cuts pieces off our feet, the dogs will grab them and chew them up?  The big dog does that, so even tho that seems a little weird, apparently that is normal for dogs.  But NOW, the big dog has decided that he wants to eat pieces off our legs too!  Right by our knees and our hocks, there are small crusty gray patches that the lady calls chestnuts.  EVERYONE has them, and usually they are only a little bit raised from our skin, but they don't have any hair on them and they are kind of flaky.  The big dog has been sneaking around the ponies and trying to nibble them off the ponies' legs. So one minute, you are diving your nose into a new fresh pile of Hey! and warning off  your sisters Elfe and LuLu and the next thing you know, some doofus dog has his head between your legs, chewing on your knee!   It is ridiculous.  And two of the ponies, my big sister Gypsy and the beautiful LaPerlita, both had ouchy feet last year after the white stuff left.  And now, even tho they don't have ouchy feet,  they have chestnuts that are hard and rubbery and don't break off, so the lady has to trim them when she cuts pieces off their feet.  But the big dog really wants to chew on them, so he is definitely moving into precarious territory there.  But then, it's not like he's the brightest star in the sky --  after all, his day is made when he finds a chunk of frozen pony poop.