Cats

It has been a long time since I posted anything on here.  So now I am going to post something about cats.  Us ponies do not have strong opinions about cats, like we do about dogs.  Cats are fairly homogeneous in size and are not usually very noisy when they are around ponies.  So we do not have to concern ourselves much about them.  When it is cold outside there is a cat that comes to the barn and lives in our hay.  He is a ginger cat that is the same color as Billy and Lulu and Siena.  He acts like he really likes the lady and purrs and rubs against her, but if she pets him, then he gets really mad when she stops.  He hisses and growls and bites her.  So she pets him real quick and then stops before he can grab her. He is supposed to be defending the hay bale strings from mice, so she tries to treat him like an employee.  When he was in the barn while there was still a lot of hay there, a black cat came to the barn too.  The black cat is afraid of everyone and hides and runs when the dogs or the lady show up.  The cats made a lot of noise, for cats, and the lady was worried about the cats fighting.  The other lady who came here and knows way more about cats than our lady said that she did not have to worry about the cats fighting because they were probably going to have kittens. So now there is hardly any hay in the barn and only a couple of bales go out to two of the pastures because most of us have grass to eat.  The ginger cat is not around any more but sometimes the black cat is lurking around.   Two days ago, the lady went to get hay in the barn and found three tiny newborn kittens on the floor. The kittens were cold and dead and the lady was sad because the kittens were so cute.   So today, she picked up a bale of hay and three tiny sibling kittens were mewling behind it. They are very cute too and the lady does not want the dogs to find them.  The dogs like to bite small furry things.  So she put the hay bales back around the kittens so that they have a hay cave.  We don't know what will happen to the cats.   

goose eggs

So as you know, there is a big dog that comes back here with the lady when she brings us nice hay on the little green truck thing.  The big dog is usually tied to the little green truck thing and he trots along next to it when it moves and when it stops, sometimes he barks at us.  But two days ago, the big dog was loose.  He was running wild like a maniac.  He  swoops under the fences and barks at the horses, he dives into the streams and sticks his head in the holes where the brown fuzzy animals live.  He goes tearing across the field like he has a big black cow running behind him, and then just before the woods, he stops and comes tearing back.  The lady yells at him and says "Let's go!"  and mostly he follows when he gets around to it.  The short white dog sits in the little green truck thing and tries to pretend the big dog isn't there.  The lady says the big dog has to grow up and learn to be a farm dog. He is doing a lot of learning at a fast speed, us ponies are tired just watching him zoom by.   Today, the lady was checking the fence by the pond and the short white dog came to help her and next thing she knew, there was a big honking bird running right at the little dog and making a racket.  The big dog came charging in for the rescue and chased the big bird clear across the pasture until it flew away.   Then later, the big dog was sticking his head in holes by the pond and the lady came to check on him and he was looking really proud of himself.  He came over to the lady and gave her a hard white ball that he found with a bunch of other balls along the shore of the pond.  There were two big honking floating birds that seemed to be pretty mad about that.  So the lady put him in a stall and she put the ball back with the other balls.   Then she got the hose and made the big dog really wet because he had been rolling in the stall and smelled a whole lot like a pony.  I think that big dog is going to smell like that for a long time if he is going to be a farm dog. 

Cold and the big dog

Cold, cold COLD!!!!!   There is white stuff everywhere.  It falls from the sky and covers everything.  The creeks where we used to drink are hard and covered with white stuff.  Sometimes the lady comes down with a stick and hits the white ground with it a bunch of times,  Then a spot gets wet again for a little while.  But by the next day, it is gray and hard again.  All of us ponies are frosty.  We have white frost on our coats and whiskers and eyelashes. This makes us especially cute. 

So yesterday the lady showed up with hay for us and she was really really late and we were all starving.  There MIGHT have still been some hay there for us to eat, but it was not good hay like the new hay.  The lady brought that big black dog with her.  The big black dog has an elevated sense of self-importance.  He sticks his head through the gate and then he barks and sometimes he tries to sneak in and sniff around.  If we come over to see what he is doing, he gets all panicky and runs back through the gate and then he tries to make us think he is a wolf and barks alot.  I have not seen wolfs, but I am pretty sure that big dog is not a wolf.  I think a wolf would smell wild.  That dog smells like he lives with the lady and the happy little white dog that just ignores us. (We have not seen the little dog since the white stuff is everywhere.)  After the lady put hay out for us, she and the big dog came into our pasture.  My sister Pinke was pretty surprised and excited to see that big dog walking right in next to the lady.  She started prancing and snorting and stuck her tail all up and went trotting over to tell the big dog to get out.  A bunch of us other ponies figured we had better back her up, just in case there was going to be trouble, so five of us arched our necks and blew at the big dog and circled around the back while Pinke came up in front  The big dog was really scared and wanted to run away -- Ha! Ha! Some kind of wolf he is!  But the lady told us to go back over to eat our hay and leave them alone, She made that shushing noise that means to back off.  So we tossed our heads and trotted back to the hay, but not before letting that big dog know that we were going to have him for lunch if we had the chance.  The lady and the big dog walked all along the pasture fence and then came back over to the gate, where we were watching for them and followed them so that big dog didn't get any of his uppity ideas.  That big dog just kind of hid behind the lady's legs and didn't say a word. I think we can teach him to be a good dog.       

Angus

So FINALLY, we got some excitement!   There have been strange noises in the field next to ours for a couple of days, and my dad Bob and his mares were all upset about it, but we didn't really think it was our problem.  But this morning, two huge square animals came crashing through the magic Hemlock forest, right next to our sheds and were making a horrible, bellowing racket.  Of course, we RAN, and Ran and RAN right through the fence and tore down the posts and ran all the way across the fields up to where the lady lives in a square red barn.  We still kept running, even tho all we could do was run around the other buildings and through the nice grass.  We were all wet and snorting and sure that we were all going to be eaten alive!  The lady came out and caught Haylie and Harley led them into a paddock, so most of us ran right in there too!  Then she had to go out and get Sienna, who missed the gate and re-catch the two who ran back out to protect Sienna from the giant black monsters that were back in the woods.   Then the lady went back to see what the problem was and saw the big square noisy monsters.   We drank all our water in the trough and the lady gave us more water and then she made water spray on us, which felt really nice, but some of the ponies didn't like it.  So the lady put the fence back up, but we are still stuck up here in this little paddock, because she thinks the monsters are going to come back and scare us all over again.   It is good that we have a little breeze today, because the sun is hot and the shed here is way too small for all of us.   I don't know when we will get to move back to our fields.      

True love

 Now you know my mom Tudi lives with a bunch of us ponies in a couple of big fields with creeks and some woods and sheds and a tall round circle of logs that you can't jump out of unless you are Harley.  She was the second pony to move in here and she used to live with my dad Bob.  Tudi is a bay pony and everyone says she looks like a Dartmoor pony.  My dad is a white Welsh pony and I am the perfect combination, because I started out as a bay pony like my mom, but then I roaned out, so I am kind of gray on my body, but my head and legs and tail are still bay.  Our fields are next to a pasture where my dad Bob lives with some other mares and a goofy youngster who has hardly ever left there.   There is a biting white string between us and a dark metal fence that has squares in it and some pointy parts that poke you if you brush up against them.  There are lots of trees and brush along that dark fence.  And then there is still another fence that is metal with a wooden board on the top -- so normally, it is like the lengths of four ponies to get from us to where Bob patrols along his fence and tells us to stay away from his family. But you know, now it is getting warmer and there is hardly any white stuff on the ground. My mom Tudi has been making eyes at my dad Bob across that fence and has been going right over to try to talk to him. The ground is soft and wet, and there was a whole lot of wind, so some of the posts where the white string is attached came loose and fell over.  So my mom Tudi was able to get right over to where there is a metal gate so she could talk to Bob. The other ponies thought that was pretty interesting, so they were gathering around too and the boy ponies were arguing with Bob through the gate and next thing we knew, the gate popped right open!  Wow!  We ran right through that gate and went galloping around in Bob's pasture.  My Aunt Taca was there and and another big white horse who I don't know and that goofy young pony and they were so surprised they went galloping away from us.  But Bob went right by us into our pasture and was back there with my mom Tudi when the lady came out to give us hay.  The lady was not thrilled about that.  She closed the gate and made us stay in that little pasture all night with those three strangers.  She let Bob stay with my mom Tudi in the ring of logs.  We all got nice hay and then this morning, the lady came back and put the fence back up. She had that noisy little machine that makes trees into pieces and dragged the pieces off the fence and put new little sticks in to hold the white string up.  She put a new rope on the gate to replace the broken chain. And after she let us run back into our own pasture to eat hay, she took my mom Tudi and Bob and put them both in Bob's pasture. Those other mares don't really like that, but Tudi is so in love with Bob that the lady doesn't think it is fair to keep them apart.  I think Tudi and Bob are really happy.    

The adventurers

Us ponies were having much fun in a new woods this morning, eating bark off the trees and exploring around the little bushes. Some of the ponies left and we couldn't see them any more but we weren't worried too much about them.  Then Harley put his head up and walked back through the new woods.  Then we heard the lady calling us in a little tiny voice.  Her voice got a little bigger and then bigger and then we heard Harley calling too. So then Gypsy and Hailey said we should go see what Harley and the lady were yelling about so we walked along the pony hoofprint trail in the snow through the new woods and then we could see the lady and Harley standing in our pasture.  They were on the other side of the white tape that was lying in the snow that used to be our fence.  The lady was petting on Harley, but we couldn't see if she had anything good to eat or not.  Haylie walked along the hoofprint trail and went to where there are lots of big rocks and dark lines that went into the snow.  The dark lines came up out of the snow and were stuck to posts, but where Haylie walked, the lines were low so she could step over them.   I decided to take a shortcut to get over to the lady and Harley fast and ended up running right into those lines.  OW!  Ow! Ow!  The lines were hard and had sharp pointy things on them that were biting me on my neck and my chest and then they grabbed my legs and were biting me there too.  I stopped and told the lady that now I was stuck and couldn't come over to see her and Harley.   The lady came over to me and checked out the lines and tried to make the ones behind my legs go into the snow, but they were tight and they wouldn't budge.  So the lady said I had to back up, even tho the lines were mean.  That seemed pretty stupid, since I didn't want to go back, I wanted to go over to where Harley and Haylie were standing, but Gypsy and my other sisters were behind me in the new woods, so I backed up and my legs came out of the nasty  lines.  Then the lady put some hay string around my neck and we walked over to where the dark lines went in the snow.  Now the lines were sticking up a little bit, but the lady put her hoof on top of them and I went across them.  Then I stopped while she tried to get Gypsy to come across the lines too, but Gypsy didn't want to.  But then my sisters Lu Lu and Elfe came with me and we walked out to the pasture and across the white tape on the snow that used to be our fence.  Then we were starting to think about breakfast, so we all trotted over to where the others were eating hay and Gypsy and DD came along after.  The lady didn't come with us.  She just stood there looking at the broken off posts and the white tape.  Then she picked up the white flat tape and laid it on the little bushes that are sticking up along there, so it was kind of like where it used to be. After a while, she came back and told us we were naughty.  Then the little green truck thing took her away and brought her back with those shiny sticks that some of the white flat string holds up.  She took the shiny sticks out to the broken posts and tried to stick the shiny sticks in the snow but they wouldn't stand up.  Then she tied the sticks to the little trees and put the white tape on them to hold them up.  It really looks like amateur hour back there. Us ponies were not impressed.  But the lady brought us extra hay which she shoved in the nets to keep us busy.  I guess we'll see if we get another adventure tomorrow.              

fall grass

All us ponies are really happy.  Today the lady came back and opened the white strings where she brings hay into our field when it is cold outside.  It is not cold outside so we did not know what she was doing.  She stood there and called us over, but we let Harley and Billy go first to see what was going on.  The lady has been out there messing around along the woods in the field next to our pasture for a couple of days now.  She made piles of brush and pulled up the brown strings that were in the woods with sticks on top of them.  So when Harley and Billy got there, she told them to walk right with her into the field of nice grass.  We could hardly believe it.  We all ran over and ran right into the nice grass too!   Except DD who got left behind somehow and then didn't notice that we were going through a place where the lady took the string down.  She ran right through the white string and pulled down two posts with her.  DD is my sister and very cute but she isn't brightest star in the sky, if you get my drift.  So then we ran through the field very excited, but there was more white string at the top of the hill, so we had to stop and eat nice grass.  All day! The lady spent the whole day with us, sitting on top of the orange machine while it picked up piles of brush with its long teeth and carried them over to our big brush pile.  We are never ever ever going to leave this nice grass.  Except maybe to get something to drink.