wasps

    In the morning, the lady went through the gate to my dad, Bob's pasture where he lives with his mares and then she started jumping around and waving her front legs and saying loud funny words.  You know, with ladies, their front legs don't have hooves, so it's probably a good thing they don't try to walk on them.  They have skinny wiggly things like worms that they can use to open gates.  Anyway, the lady didn't even want to go close to the gate then and after she fed the ponies, she drove the little green truck thing up to the barn and then went back down to the gate.  She had a red cylinder metal thing with a picture of a skinny bug on it and she pointed the top of it at the gate and the gate turned white.   Then skinny yellow bugs like the one on the metal thing started falling off the gate.   Then it was like she was on a mission.  She came to our gates and the gates by the barn and was making those skinny bugs fall down from all the gates. She kept rubbing her one front fetlock and it was red and way bigger than the other one.  
    We have not had much rain, so there is not much nice grass.  We have been out looking for some in the field behind our regular pasture, but there is not much out there.  The little spare lady was driving the orange machine around in our pasture and picking up rocks and putting them in the big orange thing's mouth.  Then she made it spit them out by our hay boxes.  And today our lady was making lots of dust in our pasture by driving the littler orange machine out there.  When she was done, it was pretty flat.  Now we have to eat hay by the rocks.
   I don't know why everyone is getting to go into the white hill except me.  Well, maybe not everyone, but there have been a lot of ponies getting carrots and pedicures.  They don't even have to carry anything or anyone around on their back usually.  It is too hot to carry anything around.   They just get to go in there and try to figure out what that lady wants and then they get a carrot.  I need to get in on some of that action.       

summer daze

Well, now it is hot and there are many bugs. Almost every day, the lady comes out and takes some of us ponies over to the barn or the white hill.  It is nice and cool and bug-free in the barn but sometimes there are other horses in there and stuff keeps moving around so every time I go there it looks scary all over again.  The lady brushes me and combs my tail and sprays wicked-smelling stuff on me and puts gooey stuff in my ears.  Then sometimes she sticks the brown lumpy thing on my back and we go to the white hill and she sits on top of me.  I don't much care for it, but I am trying to be nice to her because I don't think she knows what she is doing.  She makes funny noises and squeezes me with her legs and then she pulls my head sideways even tho I am going a totally different direction.  It is like she can't even tell where we are going. Fortunately, she gives me carrots once in a while if I walk when she squeezes her legs and clucks her mouth.  She does the same thing with the other ponies and some of the horses.   This morning I went with her to the barn and then she made my hooves look nice. I didn't think that was necessary either, but I must admit I like the way they look and feel now.   We have a little bit of grass in our field but we would have more if there was rain.  At night, the lady gives us hay in the boxes, but sometimes we would rather stay out in the field and look for grass.  She doesn't want us to stay in that field.  She thinks we might try to go mow the neighbor's grass again. That is excellent grass, so she might be right.  

muggy and buggy

Ughhh -- now it is hot and muggy and buggy.   All us ponies want to do is stand in our shed and get away from the bugs.  Actually we would like to eat nice grass by the pond, but it is better in the shed.  Yesterday the lady took me to the white hill and I got to trot around and wear the lumpy brown thing on my back.  She had that dark horse Alexis in there earlier and she sat on top of Alexis, so I thought she was going to sit on top of me too, but she didn't.  She just wanted me and Toby to trot around and be gorgeous.  It was  nice in the white hill because the sun can't get in there and there were hardly any bugs, but that was, as I said, yesterday and today would be a different story. Even without sun in there, it is too hot to trot around.  Artie and that hunk Fusion are in the barn and they hardly ever get to hang out in stalls with fans on them.  This morning the other lady who had been riding Fusion came out in our field and got Haylie and took her up to the white hill.  I don't think she likes to ride Fusion any more because all he wants to do is jump over the jump in the arena.  He doesn't even want to trot along the sides or anything, if he gets the least bit of leeway, he will tear off and jump over that jump.  I'll bet today he wouldn't want to jump over the jump and get sweatier.  But she rode Haylie around anyway before it got so hot.    

That's entertainment

Us ponies have just been plain neglected recently, while the lady is spending her time with those big horses, taking them in the white hill and giving them carrots and riding them around in the big field that has huge gigantic rolls of what used to be nice grass.  She has been riding Artie while the other lady rides around on that hunk Fusion almost every day and they go over by the stream and ride around in the woods and across the fallen trees and stuff while the big dogs bark at them from across the creek.  And she brings those bay horse mares in while the other bay horse mares stand by the gate and yell for them and she even takes those young horses Ferris and Mak into the white hill where she makes swooshing and snapping noises.  So when she came out in our pasture with her pockets full of carrots, you can bet that I was the first one right there  in front of her.  She put the halter on me first and I got to go over to the barn where I got my hair brushed and funny smelling stuff sprayed on me.  Then we went to the white hill where it was cool and I got to trot and walk around and the lady would wave a long stick with a string on it.  Sometimes she pointed it at me and sometimes she pointed it up in the air.  Sometimes the string would say SNAP!   She would say stuff like Trot!  and Wok!  and Whoa! and I did it all perfectly.  I got lots of carrots for doing the right things at the right times.  It was so easy I almost got bored with it.  So then she took some other ponies in the white hill and some of them did it right like my sister Gypsy (she did some of this stuff before but it was when she was tied to a long rope).  And some of the ponies like Tux didn't catch on so good. Tux thought it was a stupid game and he just wanted to leave.   He almost didn't even care about the carrots.  So that was yesterday and today the lady is back at the big horses again.  But us ponies have been eating grass on the other side of the creek, so we have hardly even paid any attention at all to the entertainment in the white hill.  We are making our own entertainment out here.    

How many ponies?

You know our neighbor who is always mowing his lawn?  He has really pretty short nice grass and it is really green.  It must be special grass for as much time as he spends mowing it.  So us ponies went over there to check it out and help him with the mowing.  He didn't appreciate that at all.    He called the lady and said that there were 14 horses in his yard.   The sun was just barely up, so maybe he couldn't see us so good.  The lady knows that there are 17 of us ponies in all and we were all checking out the nice short grass except my Mom, Tudi, so I don't know what he was counting.  Anyway, the lady came and told us we had to go home, so we followed Harley and went back in our regular pasture.  That turned out to be a bad idea because there is not sufficient grass in our pasture. We have to look really hard for that grass.  We were  kind of annoyed about it all day and last night.  This morning, the lady came out and so we ran over to her to tell her to let us out by the pond for the nice grass there.  She hardly paid any attention to us at all.  She kept looking at my Mom Tudi.  Last night Tudi laid down and when she got up, there was my new baby sister on the ground.  So the lady was upset about Tudi being out there in the pasture with my baby sister.  She told Tudi that she didn't know Tudi was going to have a baby because she took my dad, Bob away from her last year when her other baby was only 5 days old.  I guess my dad and Tudi are fast operators. So we kept trying to run over to the lady to convince her to open the gates to the nice grass, but she just went out and fixed other fence and it took her forever to get our gate open so we could go out by the pond.  Then she tried to lead my Mom and the new baby by us but we all wanted to run up and see the new baby, so she had to go back and carry the baby across the creek so she could take them up to the barn.  We are having lots of rain to make the grass grow and it is kind of cool, so I don't know why she wanted to take my mom away.  There are no bugs out here at all.  And now we have nice grass so it is perfect!        

Entertainment

There has been a way lot of exciting stuff going on around here.  There has been an extra lady who has her mane pulled who walks around with the regular lady and does stuff.  They led my dad Bob and the white horse mare up to the barn and then  Taca and her baby from this year and the one from last year and then they took the white horse mare and Bob back to the pasture again.  That was really fun to watch, so we ran along the fence and all lined up like it was a parade to see them go by.   Taca didn't like us being so close to her little baby, so she made faces at us and called her baby and told it to stay right there beside her.  Then later our lady came out to us carrying a halter.  We were all standing up on top of the hill by the gate and the lady was really surprised.  "Ponies!" she said. "I am so glad you are up here waiting for me instead of on the other side of the creek."  We looked at her and then we all looked down the hill.  So the lady looked down the hill too and she said "WHO is that pony back there?"   Then she went and got the little green truck thing and her noisy little machines and she and the short-maned lady put the boards back up on the fence in the pasture next to us and put part of our fence back up and went back and caught Taca's baby from last year and took her out of our pasture.  We were glad she was gone.  We didn't need any non-friend ponies running around in our field eating our nice grass.  The short- maned lady has been riding some of the ponies and there is still ANOTHER lady who is coming and riding that hunk Fusion.  Yesterday there were ponies coming and going out of the pasture so much we could hardly keep track of them  Even Toby got to go out to the big  grassy round pasture and the lady sat on his back and he had to NOT run over to try to talk to the other horses.   It was hard for him because he didn't know what that lady wanted him to do and it was all new.  He walked around and watched Haylie trot and run with the short-maned lady on her back.  He didn't think it was so much fun, but he got some carrots, so he didn't think it was terrible. We have lots of nice grass now that we had rain and the sun has been shining, so we don't really need to hang around and wait for the ladies to entertain us.     

Riding pony

FINALLY, the lady figured out that we needed to eat that nice grass by the pond and she opened our gate so we could go out there.  It took us a little while to figure out the gate was open, because we had to eat other nice grass by the white hill, so we were pretty busy.  The lady came out with a new lady and they shooed us back into our pasture, which was pretty annoying let me tell you.  So we were all standing there in our shed and giving them really dirty looks and the lady started to call us and walked off down the hill.  The boys should have followed her, because that is their job, but since they weren't doing anything except standing around feeling sorry for themselves,  I went after the lady and she gave me a carrot!  So THEN the others came over and the lady started running down the hill toward the gate.  We stopped and watched her acting so odd and when she got to the gate, she ran right through it because there was nothing there but a hole.  Wow!  So then we all galloped down there and started to eat the nice grass.
   Yesterday the lady came and got me and took me to the barn.  The barn was cool and a little scary, but she brushed my back and my neck and combed out my beautiful tail.  Of course, I was deserving of all the attention and I was very good and didn't knock stuff off the shelves with my nose like some ponies do.  Then she put a funny bridle on me without any metal part in my  mouth and took me to the white hill.  She stood me next to a big black steppy thing and then she climbed up and lay down on top of my back.  I didn't know what to do, so I just stood there and I got a carrot.  Then she sat on my back.  I sniffed her legs and thought about biting one, but since I was getting carrots, it didn't seem like a good idea to go around upsetting the carrot cart.  Then the lady would say "wok" and make funny clicking noises. I tried just standing there, since that had been working so far, but I didn't get any more carrots for that.  So finally I got bored and decided to go try to look over the wall and see if I could see other ponies. THEN I got carrots.  But the lady would pull on my head and make me look in directions where I wasn't even going.  I never did figure out what was up with that.  But I got pretty many carrots and it was nice and cool in the white hill.  Then I got to go back out with the other ponies.  So it was a pretty fun, if strange, day.  But I hope that lady figures out what she is doing soon.