Equine Soap Operas....

I grew up in a very small community; the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else and, mostly, everyone knows what they (and everyone else) are up to at any given point in time. Both Melissa and I have observed that the animals seem to have re-created the community structure of my youth right here on this farm. I've mentioned before that on a day to day basis the horses don't seem to pay a lot of attention to us people unless we are, for whatever reason, running particularly early or late with the groceries. They're far too busy creating the never-ending soap opera that makes up their lives. If the plot line is a little thin and predictable by human standards, it seems to be quite riveting to the players.

Spike seems to be fitting in nicely with his group. He was fast friends with O'Reilly early on, and they still clearly share an alliance, but he seems to have broadened his scope some and today I see him associating more with Snappy and Lightening. Judging by what I saw earlier this afternoon, I think he and Snappy are secretly plotting to stage a bloodless coup combined with a general insurrection and their plan is to take over their group. More on this as it develops.

Meanwhile, over in the mare field, the girls endlessly gossip about Grand, a new, and apparently dreamy, addition to the big boy's field (Melissa here - actually Grand was a previous member of the big boys but was subsequently able to return to work for about a year and now he is back for full retirement. We will re-introduce Grand in an upcoming post). It seemed to be MyLights' turn to act the fool today. She thinks Grand is particularly exciting and she's not been subtle about showing this to him and the world. In typical woman fashion (!), the other mares pretended to be too busy to notice what was going on. They spent their time today fussing over Cuff Links, their pony, and talking about MyLight, (the easy slut) behind her back. Of course by tomorrow another mare will be in heat and today's alliances will be thrown out the window BUT the gossip will continue !

This evening Melissa and I prepared the horse trailer for tomorrow's short drive to her lesson with Bonnie and Sky. All the horses in the field nearest the trailer watched us do this, and I noticed that Norman and Cinnamon walked away to join Sparky the donkey and Lexi. It doesn't take much imagination to know that they were dissing the "world travellers" and probably laughing at them because they have to work instead of hitting the golf course and the swimming pool like they will.

Back at the barn, Mina and Jo came through the doors on a whirlwind tour of destruction and in less than a minute managed to get into Faune's wraps, a bale of hay we left on the floor and some grain that had spilled. When I walked in, I saw the chaos as I watched Jo pull Melissa's new Andis clippers from their box which, somehow, was also left on the floor.

Mina standing in the barn looking very innocent; "I would never touch anything I'm not supposed too!"

Jo standing on the hay bale while Mina watchesI thought I was going to be taking another picture similar to the one above, but right as I took the picture Jo leaped off the hay bale and went flying over Mina. When I posted this on our Facebook page someone captioned it "Kung Fu Jo" which was perfect. Never a dull moment with the fainters.

With all this going on all day every day, who needs soap operas ?

Bonnie

Sparky

Cinnamon and Norman

Annie, Buster and Beaulah

Ogie

B-Rad

Teddy and Clay

Slinky, Lucky, Spike, Chili, O'Reilly, Snappy

Sebastian, Winston and Faune

Asterik