pointless endeavors

Us ponies are wet. We don't really mind being wet, because we are warm.  We don't have to go in our sheds when it is wet and warm.  We can just look for nice grass.  Nice grass is getting harder to find now.  We have to look in the bushes and by the creek for it.   Yesterday we were not wet and the lady came back to see us on an orange machine.  She drove around in the trees where there are lots of sticks laying around in the mud. She would back up toward one of the bigger sticks and then she got off and had a clanky bumpy rope that she tied on the stick.  After she got back on the orange machine and tried to drive away., the big stick ran after her and chased her.  Now we have all these big sticks laying around in our field.  They are going to be in the way of the nice grass.   Then the lady was driving around in the magical forest where we can't go any more.  It is really bumpy and there are lots of little and big sticks over there.

The lady has been making some of the horses move around to new pastures.  First Fleur moved in with Ferris and Mak because Artie left.  Fleur hated living with the two boys, so then Jewel moved in with them too, so then Fleur thought it was okay.  But then Ferris moved to the front pasture with Mari and Rita and Alexis.  Ferris liked living with Mak, even tho Mak would bite him, but the lady thought that he would like having his own girls to hang out with..  Alexis thought he was the cutest guy she had ever seen in her whole life, but Rita didn't like him at all. So now he has been living with those girls for a couple of days and they are all getting along better.  I don't know why anyone wouldn't want to be his girlfriend.  He is tall and super cute and doesn't bite at all.  Except grass and hay.  I would like to have Ferris live with us. But Billy would not like him and he would definitely bite him.  Billy thinks he is the boss of us, but everyone else back here knows that my sister Gypsy is really the boss.       

After the lady got done being chased by the big sticks, we went over to see if she had anything good to eat.  She told us that she would bring the stupid nets out and hang them up, which she did this morning in the rain.  But then she left and has not come back with any hay for the nets.  So what is the point of that?.          

Rain

The lady who lives up the road said that I should blog about the rain.  I don't think she likes the rain. I know she doesn't like the mud.  That is where us ponies are different from her.  Since the rain came, the grass is greener, so we are pretty happy about that. The grass had been turning brown for a while and we were starting to think that our personal lady better get out here with those stupid hay nets and bring us hay.  But then it rained.  So this is way better.  And mud feels so good when it is squashed around and smeared on our backs.  And necks.  And faces.  Of course, you have to work at it to get a good covering, -- first you have to find a place where there isn't grass growing, then you have to make sure that there are not a bunch of sticks or rocks there and then you can finally lay down and flip around.  I think I have a predisposition toward rain because my mom Tudi looks like one of those ponies from Dartmoor, and of course, my dad Bob is of Welsh descent.  I hear they get pretty much rain over in those places.
 
So we are all looking pretty good back here,  We have found a LOT of different kinds of adornments for our manes and forelocks. There are big burdocks and cockleburs for large entanglements, and then we add little bitty round burs and some cool black stickers that bristle out all over our heads that set off the mud beautifully.  The only problem is that to get the burs, we have to go in the bushes where there are little itchy bugs that crawl on our heads and bite us and turn into fat bugs.  Those bugs are mean and make sores on our necks and under our heads.  So the lady comes back and scratches us and takes the bugs off, but then we have to go find new ones, so it is a vicious cycle. I guess that is just one of the hazards of looking gorgeous.          

Carrot shortage

It has been a while since I blogged.  Us ponies have been busy this summer.  There was a lot of grass to eat.  We had to check the fence to make sure that it was still up and we had to eat grass on top of the hill and by the apple tree, over by the rocks and by the creek and on the other side of the bridge and we had to check inside the round log circle and along where the logs are piled up.  Like I said, there was a lot of grass to maintain.  One time someone came and drove around on the orange machine and made the weeds shorter in parts of our fields, but he didn't stop and talk to us or anything.  And of course we have our fancy new sheds that we could stand inside when the bugs were biting our ears.  The sheds are a problem because we all have to stand inside the same shed.  I don't know why there are two of them. For a while Toby and Harley left with the lady and we didn't see them for a long time.  And then, here they come, waltzing back into our field two days ago and acting like they were happy to see us when we knew that they had been up by the barns getting carrots and doing fun stuff.  So we are pretty mad at them and we are not even talking to them hardly at all.  And Gypsy and Billy bit them.  So there.  The lady only comes to see us a couple of times a day and then she pets on us and doesn't have carrots.  We would like to help that lady ride better if that is what she wants, but we can't help her if she doesn't sit on our backs.  So she is out of luck.  She only sits on the backs of some of the horses and ponies that she has up by the barn.  She was sitting on the one pony and he was trying to help her ride better and she would fall off.  I don't think she is catching on to it at all.  She is calling  him a little bucker.  I think that is rude. The lady acted like she was going to take LuLu up to the barn with her and Lulu was being all friendly and getting her head rubbed on and then the lady stopped and said that Lu was skunked, so she couldn't go with her.  I am not sure what that means, but apparently it is something that will wash off after a while. Today the lady spent the whole morning with a stick with a square brown thing on the end, mucking around at the end of Krissy's pasture.  She went into the high weeds outside the fence so that you couldn't even see her and knocked the weeds down and then made a path for the water to run in.  Then she went in the mud that was almost up to her knees and  scooped it around and made the water run out of the pasture.  It was pretty funny sometimes because she would get stuck and couldn't get her big feet out of the mud. When she got done, she had almost as many of those stickers and little burs all over her hair as us ponies have. But ours looks way better because of the artistic shapes that we make with our forelocks.  Hers was really random.  But then she pulled them all out anyway, because she knew she could never get them to look as good as we do.
   So life is good without bugs and we are thinking that soon the lady is going to bring the big nets down here and hang them up to put hay in. Grass is better but the grass is getting harder to find.  If only there were more carrots........               

New Sheds

The noisy man with the little buzzy loud machines has been back here hanging out with us and making a racket.  Sometimes he brings another man and sometimes he just climbs up and down by himself. He brings a blue truck but no carrots or anything that is good for a pony to eat.  He was dragging flat tree parts around by our log circle and when he was done, there was a big box that we could stand inside.  LaPerlita went and stood inside it but us other ponies were suspicious and we kept standing in the trees.  Now he is doing it all over again but a little further from our log circle.  And LaPerlita got sick so the lady took her away.  Sometimes ponies go away  and then they stay at the barn for a while and then they come back. A couple of days ago, the lady brought some other ladies and some girls to visit us.  It was great!  They all hugged us alot and petted us and told us how beautiful we are.  But there were no carrots.  If there had been carrots, me and Gypsy would have had to chase the other ponies away from the girls and the ladies so that we could eat them all. The hugs were nice, but they were not worth chasing anyone around for them.  And there were enough hugs to go around anyway.

            

Riding ponies

A couple of days ago, the lady came back to see us and she put the strappy thing around my head and I walked with her the whole way past my dad Bob's pasture and up the hill by where those big horses live.  We didn't see the big horses but their entire pasture was white.

The lady said the little daisy-like flowers covering it are called camo-meal and they smell really nice.  So we went to the barn she put a real saddle on my back -- not the brown lumpy thing that is so light you can hardly feel it -- but the kind made out of cows. (I don't know if this is a myth, but it is what I heard.  It does not look like a cow.)  Then she put a thing with straps around my  head but no metal part in my mouth and it had straps to where she could hold on after she sat on top of me.  We went out to the big arena and I got to walk around out there where there are white sticks on the ground.  The lady sat on my back and pulled my head this way and that.  Then a different lady showed up and she was really pretty.  She was my size and had on fancy boots.  But she didn't have any carrots, so it is hard to determine how nice she is. I walked around the arena while the ladies talked and then I got to go back to my pasture with both of the ladies escorting me.  I was VERY important. Then the ladies took my mom, Tudi, up to the barn and put the saddle on her too.  Billy was in the barn and when my mom Tudi saw him, Wow, she was blown away with how incredibly handsome he was looking.  I mean, like she didn't want to leave his side. She just stood by his stall, swooning and saying "Take me now!"  The ladies did not appreciate Tudi's adoration of Billy -- they thought she should go outside and pretend to be a riding pony, like she learned to do a long time ago, before she was my mom.  Our regular lady got on Tudi's back and they were walking around in the yard, but every time Billy would call out to her, she would stop.  She was not shy in showing her affection for Billy, which frankly would be a bit embarrassing depending on where you were.  So then the lady said she is going to need more practice at being a riding pony and then she had to stay in the barn for a little while.  We both got some carrots, but all in all, it was not an overly carrot-heavy day.             

hard work

The lady has been showing up back here pretty much and it is almost at the point where it is getting annoying.  Sometimes she brings some other lady or another along with her and then those ladies give us carrots too, but not enough.  The other ladies brush us or hold the rope that attaches to the straps on our heads and one of the ladies pointed a little black box at us while we trotted around in the log circle.  Mostly tho, our personal lady comes back by herself and she gets the brown lumpy thing and puts it on top of some of us and then she sits on top of us.  She does it to Gypsy and my mom Tudi and to me and she puts it on top of Sienna, but she doesn't sit on Sienna.  Then we walk around and if we hear a click, we get a carrot.  We have to wear the metal thing in our mouths so that we are fashionable which I didn't like so much, but the lady puts brown sticky stuff on it and then it tastes pretty good.  Today,  I was turning  my head away because I didn't want to put the metal thing in my mouth and my little sister Elfe came up and she tried to take it in her mouth.  Can you imagine!  Who does she think she is?  She has not even had the lumpy thing on her back!  So I laid back my ears at her and I took the metal thing for myself.  The part where the lady sits on me is getting more annoying tho.  Now she puts her legs against my sides and then the metal thing pulls on  my mouth and when I try to yank it back, it doesn't move AT ALL and then I have to turn my head.  Then she makes funny noises and squeezes on my sides and says TROT so I have to go faster and she jiggles around up there.  So then I want to stop, but she doesn't want me to stop.   And she makes me turn my head when I want to go in other directions.  It is VERY complicated and I don't get nearly enough carrots and grain for all the work I am doing.  Today I started jumping around, but she didn't seem to like that either.  I know Gypsy has the same issues.  And Gypsy even did this stuff back a long time ago when she was a younger pony.  But she doesn't remember, or at least she says she doesn't remember.  Harley says it is really easy and he wants to do it instead of us, but the lady just ignores him.  She says we have to learn this stuff so that little girls can ride us.  I think little girls would just want to pet me and brush me and make me beautiful and give me carrots.  I hope this lady knows what she is talking about.       

One trick pony gone

    The lady comes back to see us with weird stuff just about every day.  She has that lumpy brown thing and stuff she spritzes at us -- on our bellies and chests and ears.  She puts the strap thing on our heads and then she makes us go back and forth or sideways.  Fortunately, there are lots of carrots involved, so almost everyone wants to get in on the fun.  She had to fix the gate that Siena knocked down so that we can go in the circle of logs by ourselves and not be bothered by Harley.  He is the one who mostly barges in on everyone else's carrot time. She has been sitting on top of us too, either with the lumpy thing or without, and then she brought out a strap thing with metal parts and she put it in some of the ponies' mouths!  Gypsy had to take it in her mouth a couple of times and then when she didn't care any more, the lady sat on her back and Gypsy walked around.  Today she put the metal thing in my mouth too.  It was really weird and I didn't like it at all.  But then the lady told me that if I want to be fashionable, I have to wear it in my mouth.  She said the little girls who ride ponies usually want ponies who have metal things in their mouths.  I can hardly believe that, but what can I say?  I am a slave to fashion and if the metal thing makes me glamorous, I certainly can't let any of those other ponies go around being more entrancing than me. It is hard to eat carrots with it in my mouth tho, so I am not sure that I like that part at all.  It is tough to be a diva.
     The lady says that she is going to need a new trick pony now that the hunk Fusion left with the lady with the pretty hair.   I do not think I am going to get that trick pony job. Just about all of us ponies know  how to give kisses and a few other tricks, but Harley and Krissy know the most tricks.  They are the pushiest ponies and they work the hardest at doing them.  Krissy is really short, so her options  are limited as far as riding goes, she would have to give rides to little bitty kids and Krissy isn't really receptive to that idea. So her other jobs could be pulling a pony cart or the trick gig.  She has already mastered a fun Lipizzaner levade trick that almost makes her look tall.  The lady is probably afraid to teach Harley that trick since he almost took her knee off after he learned the "shake hands" trick and kept offering his hoof every time he saw her.  It would be intimidating to see his hooves at eye level every time she turned around.
   So we will see what fun and carrots tomorrow brings.