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Zoo day

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I love having friends who want to pack up a bunch of children and head out to the zoo. The weather started out cloudy, but the sun eventually came out. It was a lovely day and everyone had a great time. Our children all get along well together and we moms are good friends. I can't tell you how nice it is to have found these people.  First you have to sit through several peacock pictures. I have never been so close to a peacock with his tail displayed. He was even doing his dance.  I found the back of him to be as interesting as the front.  The peacocks were all calling today and they are loud. I had briefly looked up raising peacocks a while back because they're cool and children were interested. I'm afraid they have fallen into the donkey category of not an animal for us, and hearing them call confirmed it. My neighbors can rest in peace that Zorro will continue to be the loudest animal on the farm.  Some other pictures. One of my friends somehow managed to get even my cam
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Meet Chuck

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When J. and I were still doing youth ministry, we made a point to see the shows that the youth in our program were in. One of these was the local high school's annual student written, led, and directed production. One of the songs in the show was about Chuck the Tractor.  "Oh the life of Chuck the Tractor was a long, hard one. He plowed the fields of farmers in the hot, hot sun. But when the day was through, he would sit inside his tractor shack and think of all the things he'd do if he were not a tractor. ... " I wish I could share the tune because it is very catchy. So catchy that over thirty years later, J. and I can still sing it. This is why, when a friend offered us her tractor that she no longer needed, it had to be named Chuck. Chuck arrived this past Saturday while I was at the horse fair. L. has already learned to drive it. J. is very excited to have it and it has already proven itself useful. J. would like to get some attachments for it which will make it e
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Fiber Monday - When worlds collide

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I don't have anything progress to show on anything. It's been that kind of a week. Actually, I wasn't even sure I would do a Fiber Monday post there was so little to say. And then I went to the horse fair over the weekend. I'm wandering around the exhibition center where all the vendors are and happen to see someone selling jewelry made with horse hair. Since I still had Bristol's tail hair sitting in the studio, I decided to take a look. (For non-horsey people, when someone has a beloved horse die, often they will cut off the tail hair to have made into some sort of jewelry to remember them.) I really liked what she had made and we started chatting. Well, one thing left to another and I mentioned I was a hand spinner which started us down the fiber arts rabbit hole. She then says she's been weaving with horse hair.  G. was with me, and might have heavily sighed at this point and muttered something about being there for a while because I was very excited and sta
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Permission to disagree

I left two of the clinics we had gone to yesterday at the horse fair. Sometimes a clinician's personality just doesn't match your own and sometimes there are just so many egregiously wrong things that you can't stay because to do so would indicate support. I want to briefly discuss the latter. The minute the word 'respect' came out of his mouth, I knew we were in trouble. Not only do I problems with requiring respect from children, but I have even more difficulty with using that frame of reference with a horse. It just doesn't make sense and if you read current ethology research it is not how herds function. It's outdated and damaging.  [An aside to head off comments. Yes, I expect my horses to be safe to be around. They don't push in for food, they don't push ahead through a gate, they don't push me aside. Those aren't safe behaviors for horse-human interactions. I work very hard to be sure my horses understand how to safely be around people
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Horse Fair

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G. and I were up and out of the house to head up to the Midwest Horse Fair this morning. We had a great time and only saw a handful of snow flakes. This is an improvement over actual snow one year and drenching rain another. I feel as though I do not bring good weather to the event as it has never been even vaguely warm when I have been there. But we assumed the weather would be unpleasant, so were prepared.  We saw many beautiful horses, did some shopping, learned some new things, and watched some clinicians who were a decidedly very mixed bag. One of the highlights was watching a team of six Belgian horses being harnessed and driven. One of the team was over 19 hands. For the non-horsey among you, this means that at the base of his neck he stood over six feet tall. G. took a few videos of them, so enjoy this one and I'll give more details another day. 
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The day we didn't add to our family surgery total

L. woke up with significant pain in her lower right abdomen. Now, I don't know about you, but this is one of those things which causes parent alarm bells to go off. I'm pretty low key about most medical things these days, often taking the wait and see approach. Pain in the lower right abdomen that caused a child to squeak a bit when I push on it? Not good. Since W. had an emergency appendectomy a while back, it makes me even more jumpy. It makes me so jumpy that I actually called our doctor's office to see if they would rather us come there first. I try not to ever call the office because the process is so horrendous, instead taking care of everything I need to do when I'm physically in the office. This particular phone call was actually quick and painless with the nurse returning my call within a half an hour. We went through all the triage questions and she confirmed my initial gut instinct that this required a trip to the ER.  I have actually lost count of the number
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Pony update

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Vienna continues to improve. What relieves me the most is that she is standing much more normally instead of having her back legs tucked underneath her. She is not, however, entirely convinced that she is pleased with Buddy's appearance in her life. Buddy is cute, but he also has no problem taking what he wants. This is what Vienna objects to. She spends a lot of time standing far away from him and staring. It's still early days in their relationship. It's actually not unlike how Major was in his relationship with Java at first. He was not a fan of Java's pushy ways. Somewhere along the line, he decided to stand up for himself, and they've been good friends ever since. I expect the same thing will happen with Vienna and Buddy. These things just take time.  Some pony videos for you. They aren't exciting videos because they're just eating, bud I think watching horses eat is soothing. 
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