Treats

FINALLY us ponies are getting some action back here.  After all the snow and the cold and the biting string sometimes falling down and my dad Bob getting into our pasture and us getting hay every day and then Tux coming to live with us, even tho we all hate him except my mom, Tudi, -- finally, we are getting something interesting.  The lady came back with the big orange machine and drove it around outside and inside our pasture yesterday.  The dirt is wet and sucks our feet way down so the round things on the orange machine were sunk way down too and sometimes they just went around without making the orange machine even go anywhere.  The machine made super huge ruts in the wet dirt and the lady made it dig even bigger ruts and then she put a black tube in one of the ruts and then covered it up.  But then today, things got really exciting.  The lady showed up and she slogged through the really really wet dirt and came out to where we were laying down in our pasture.  It is almost dry out here where we have a little bit of nice grass.  The lady had crunchy treats in her pockets so we were really happy to see her.  Of course, only special (read "bossy") ponies got to eat any of the crunchy treats.  The lady had some funny-looking leather strap things that she tried to put on Toby's head.  But the first one was too big and the second one was too small.  So she put the smaller one on Billy's head.  Then she and Billy went over to the log ring and Billy got brushed a little and then they practiced Billy standing at certain places.  Billy is the boss of all of us, but he is sensitive and worries about stuff.  The lady sat on his back and they just walked around a little bit.  Billy thought it was kind of fun because the lady would make a click noise and then he would get one of those crunchy treats. When they were done walking around, the lady called us ponies and Harley came running over.  Harley knew that she had treats in her pockets.  He went in the log ring and they practiced standing at certain places too.  Then the lady sat on Harley's back.  But since none of the leather strap things fit on Harley too good, she didn't put one on his head.  Then she asked Harley to "Wok" and stuff.  Harley LOVES that he gets treats when the lady is on his back.  Back when he learned to have the lady sit on his back, there were no treats and NOW there are TREATS!  Harley gets really beside himself over the clicking and the treating. He didn't want to Wok and Ho. He wanted to jump and run in jubilation.  The lady could see that this was not going to go as planned. ( I quite frankly can't figure out what she was planning when she got on that pony without any tack...)  She asked Harley to "Ho", but Harley started to spin and jump.  The lady fell off onto the wet soft ground.  Then Harley really ran and bucked.  But he didn't get a click or a treat for that. So then the lady got the bigger leather strap thing and kind of made it fit on Harley's head.  Then they walked around a little bit with the lady sitting on his back and Harley got some treats for turning and stopping.  Then the lady got Haylie and put the stappy thing on her head because it fits on her.   They walked around in the log ring too.  Haylie was suspicious of the treating and the stuff in the log ring.  She thought it was too easy.
   So I don't know when it will be my turn in the log ring.  But I hope it will be soon, because I am one of the special-est ponies in the whole field. 

A break in the weather?

So us ponies are starting to think maybe the white stuff will go away.   You  know, when we look around, there is still white stuff everywhere.  Just like there has been for a really really really long time.  Us ponies made trails where we always walk, so the white stuff is tromped down along there and by the nets where we get our hay, but other places, the white stuff is over our knees, so it is hard to walk there.  We run around over by the nets along the big logs fence when the lady brings our hay down, so from outside the fence, it looks like the logs are only about as high as our knees, but we can't actually get out there, (probably) because it is just an illusion.  If we go right up to the logs, they are not as high as when it is warm, but unless we can knock the logs off, they are still too high for us to want to jump over. But even tho there is white stuff and it is cold and fog comes out of our noses in the morning, the days are getting longer and when the sun is out, our backs get really nice and warm.  There are some non-tasty bushes that are starting to turn red, even tho they don't have any leaves on them or anything. This morning, the lady was throwing hay in to Krissy and her pony band and they have a little white and red bird house hanging on their fence, back behind their shed.  The lady hardly ever goes back there in the summer, but she has been throwing hay there so that the ponies can eat it out of the wind.  She flipped up the red lid of the bird house and said "Oops!  Sorry Mrs Bluebird!"  And most telling is that us ponies are getting itchy. My beautiful winter fur is not coming off, but it is starting to itch.  That means the lady is going to have to start coming back here every day with her combs and brushes and scratching on us and bringing us lots of carrots. Otherwise, why would we keep her around?   

White stuff everywhere

Ugh, I haven' t had a chance to work on this for a long time.  I have actually been getting complaints from my readers.  It is the white stuff.  It is everywhere.  So us ponies have nothing to do but stand around in the white stuff and either eat or wait for more hay to show up for us to eat.  The Lady comes in the little green truck thing in the mornings and then again in the afternoon and brings us nice hay.  This week she has been erratic tho. First there was a whole lot of white stuff and it kept falling from the sky all night and all day.  We hid in our sheds and sent Haylie out to watch for the lady to show up in the little green truck thing, and it seemed like she would never get here.  When she did finally show up, she was sitting backwards on that orange machine and making the white stuff fly all around.  I don't know  how the orange machine knew where to go.  If she was sitting like that on me,  I wouldn't know which way she wanted me to walk. So then we finally got hay and then there was more white stuff and wind, so here came the lady this morning in the little green truck thing and just before the bridge, the truck thing sunk it's round foot into the white stuff and stopped.  The lady seems to like to play a game like this with the truck thing because we have seen her do it a bunch of times.  But we do not think she should play the game before she brings us our hay.  We had to wait forever while she hiked back up to the barn and came back with the orange machine and made white stuff fly around again and eventually she got done playing around and brought our hay to us.  We were pretty annoyed with her being all late, and she started to try to make it up to us by telling us how cute we were and we thought she was going to come in and pet us while we ate the nice hay, but instead, she got all cranky and went slogging through the creek and the white stuff to find the biting rope that used to be strung along where we are not supposed to go.  The white rope was all pulled down and buried in the white stuff and the lady was floundering around in white stuff way up over her knees. So we did  not get petted at all.  Then the lady left in the green truck thing.  There is a big hill by the horses' pasture where we used to live and I think the green truck thing got tired when it was halfway up the hill because it stopped.  Then it went sideways and then we couldn't see the bottom of it at all. The lady got out of it and started poking the white stuff with a big blue square on a stick and that made the white stuff jump out from under the truck thing.  It was pretty far away from us, so it was not a very good show, if that was what the lady was aiming for.  Anyway, she did that for a long time, like she would poke the white stuff, then she would get in the truck thing and it would slide into more white stuff.  I am telling you, there is a lot of white stuff.  When it got toward the bottom of the hill, she stuck a big chain on it and attached it to the orange machine and yanked it out of the white stuff.  Then she drove them both through the horse pasture to get back up to the barn where the nice hay is.  By the time she was done, it was time for us to get more nice hay!            

winter wonder

Wow!  There is white stuff everywhere.  It is on the trees and the bushes and the ground and the logs and the fences.  The white stuff comes up to our pony knees so there is no nice grass to be seen anywhere.  At all. But under the white stuff it is gray and wet and squishy -- so really fun to walk in!  Yesterday the lady came back to see us and bring our hay on the big orange machine. The orange machine holds the hay up in the air in front of it and it grumbles the whole time it is running around, whether it is carrying hay or not.  After the lady gave us our hay, she went to look at our fence which is not really fence.  Some of it is a white rope that bites and some of it is a long ribbon like a pony would wear in her mane if she wanted to try to look as pretty as me.  The ribbon fence bites too a little bit.  But we couldn't see the rope or the ribbon too good because it had a cold tube of clear and white stuff around it that was as big around as a pony's leg!  And it was hanging low and sometimes even buried totally in the white stuff on the ground.  Us ponies could have walked right over top of that fence. So the lady walked along the fence with her big floppy feet disappearing  up over her lady fetlocks and she shook the fence and she scraped it with her front hooves so that the tube came off and then the fence came back up to its normal height.   At one place there was a whole big top of a dead tree that smashed down the fence, so the big orange machine had to grumble over to pick up the dead tree and push it back off the fence.  The lady walked all over our pasture and she was really wet by the time she drove the orange machine back to where we were eating our hay.  Then she petted us a little bit before driving right out the gate and leaving. There was either wet stuff or white stuff falling out of the sky all day yesterday and today.  Fortunately all us ponies have fuzzy coats so we don't mind any of it.  And we have sheds anyway if we do.        

Big adventure

Wahoo!  There is white stuff everywhere!  And I do mean everywhere because us ponies have gone and checked it out.  The white stuff started falling from the sky and then it would not stop.  All day long it fell and part of the night. But then yesterday it was not falling down, it was just all over the ground. But when you walked on it, your feet sank in and then it got brown.  It is really soft wet white and brown stuff.  The lady brought us our hay and put it in the nets way early yesterday.  So after we ate the hay, we didn't have much to do. You know, for a while, the lady was dragging big sticks around and piling them up all along the edge of the magic forest.  Now there is such a pile of big sticks that ponies can't even get through there.  And there are other places where she strung thick black and metal colored rope that I don't think a pony could break even if it ran really fast and ran right into it.   Plus, of course, there is the white rope that stings like a mean buzzy bug if you touch it, and that rope is in front of the stick wall and the black ropes.  But we noticed yesterday that with all the white stuff on the ground, some of the mean white rope had just up and disappeared.  I don't know what happened to it.  I am thinking those silly paranoid deer maybe knocked it down.  Those deer are completely freaking out recently and acting like everyone is out to get them. Like anyone would hurt a deer!    At any rate, we went over to where the rope was gone and discovered we could walk right over where the white rope used to be because everything was white.  Then we discovered that there was a part of the stick wall that didn't have any sticks, so it looked like it was just made for ponies to walk through.  So we did.  But inside the magic forest, there was nothing to eat, which, quite frankly,  was a huge disappointment. So we ran through the forest and came out by my dad Bob's pasture, where we all talked to Bob and his mares and that goofy foal.  Then we ran everywhere that there was no fence or horses and ponies.  It was all white, but some places had nice grass under the white stuff, so we dug around with our hooves and found lots of nice grass. Then we ran up and talked to the horses in the next pasture and Billy and Toby told them that they didn't like them.  There was a big field that used to have lots of grass, so we ran all around and make pony tracks all over it.  That was where we were when the lady showed up this morning. She was so happy to see us!  She told us we were super cute and then she went and got some nice hay and she took it into a paddock and started throwing it on top of the white stuff.  We were tired of digging for grass, so we ran over to the gate and ran in to eat the hay, which tasted really good!  But then after we ate all the hay we were stuck in there.  And the lady put straps on the heads of Harley and Billy and then she held on to ropes that were attached to them and she opened the gate and started walking with them back to our pasture. So everyone except Billy and Harley got to gallop around in the field again, but we mostly stayed up with them because they are our leaders and it would be against the pony rules to run off.  We stopped on the way back to dig up a little grass and to talk to my dad Bob through his fence, but then we would have to run fast to catch up.  So when we got back to our field, the white stinging rope was back up and there was lots of nice hay in our nets again.  It was a really fun adventure!  .                  .   

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.