Eclectic
In the last three weeks, I met eighteen Friesians,
saw the funniest animals ever,
and took a dummy for a horseback ride (no, not Randie-Lynn!).
I also "rescued" a baby robin,
and found a colony of bugs giving hugs.
A couple weeks ago, Carly and I went to visit a Friesian horse farm near here. Friesians are one of the favourites of the horse world, with their amazing athletic ability, jet black coats, and lovely feathering on their legs. Just about any horse person will swoon at the mere mention of a Friesian. Carly, like many, is in love with them, so I surprised her by kidnapping her and surrounding her with the gentle giants.
This goat lives with the Friesians.
He thinks he's a horse, but he looks pretty out of place!
As we drove home, we found this tiny pony grazing under apple blossoms...
...and what we thought were baby llamas, but which we later found out
were actually just shorn (clipped) alpacas. Still, SO CUTE. WANT.
Tanya and I now have another animal equivalent besides giraffes.
Then we stopped in at the corn maze because I need an unrelated photo for Lethbridge Living.
"Hiiii!"
"Take my picture. C'mon, you know I'm gorgeous!"
"I IS CUTE TOO."
Back in Lethbridge, this is my other dream farm.
It is entirely possible that Theo is going faster than a trot in this picture.
I am flabbergasted (he is the SLOWEST HORSE EVAR).
Arabs Midnight and Jet representin'.
Last Saturday I attended a driving clinic and had to snap some pics of this
gorgeous paint mare and some miniature ponies.
On Wednesday I volunteered at the Birds of Prey Centre, and something quite the opposite of a bird of prey was brought in... a baby robin that was probably 10 days old. Now, I wasn't there when it arrived, but if you aren't aware, robins and many other baby birds "fledge", meaning the chicks can sort of fly and are wandering about on the ground near the nest, where the parents still bring them food. Many people think that these chicks have been abandoned and "rescue" them, usually resulting in death due to improper diet or stress. The survival rate in the wild is only 40-50%, and of course it's much less when hand-reared. Even if they survive, they won't know how to hunt to avoid predators, so the odds are stacked against you regardless. Now, it is illegal to rear wild birds in your home, but at the end of the day, no one was free to take him home but me. It had just rained, so I collected lots of worms and fed him every twenty minutes, as dictated by the internet (apparently a mother robin makes 400 trips a day for food!). He was up and at 'em early Thursday morning, and was active throughout the day, but Thursday morning he was dead as a doornail for unknown reasons. Rest In Peace, Batman.
Click to viewOn Friday Jeff and I took a walk down into the coulees to hunt down the pelicans that are always hanging around down there. We only found three, and they were incredibly boring. We put on quite a show for them, jumping around and skipping rocks, trying to get them to move. Finally they got tired of our shannanigans and flew off.
Next, Jeff found what I deem to be both the creepiest and coolest thing I've ever seen, a huge colony of metallic blue beetles... hundreds and hundreds of them! It was amazing and disgusting, all at the same time.
On Saturday, I got three friends together and we all rode to Coalhurst to find the gymkhana grounds out there. It was a long ride, but the weather was beautiful. No pictures... how odd.
On Sunday, Randie-Lynn, who came for her friend's high school grad, spent the day with me at the farm. Before she left for the summer, Michelle (my upstairs neighbour) had given me a dummy she didn't want anymore, so Randie-Lynn and I decided to have some fun with it. We dressed it up and took it for a horseback ride into town! Every car that went by slooooowed down and took a second look. We were killing ourselves laughing.
We gave "Bob" his choice of horses, and at first he flung himself at Santana, but in a moment of indecisiveness, ultimately chose to double with Randie-Lynn on Patches.
We took Bob to visit his friends in town.
Patches spooked and Bob took a rather nasty fall...
...so we took him to the chiropractor to get fixed up
(by this time he came to his senses and chose to ride the superior horse, Santana)
We then took Bob for a pick-me-up coffee at Tim Hortons.
Though we have been through the drive-thru numerous times on horseback, this time a pimple-faced teenager came out and warbled (a la the Simpsons generic fast food teenager), "The boss says you can't bring the horses through the drive-thru." We told him we had done it before and had not been a problem, but he mildly persisted. Bob got mad, though, so Randie-Lynn went in and upon inquiring, was told by two other employees that the teenager didn't know what he was talking about and that it was fine if we rode through. Persistance for the win!
Don't mess with Randie-Lynn.
Patches wanted some of Randie-Lynn's Ice Capp.
She was rather wired on the ride home.
We got tired of carrying Bob and threw him in a ditch to retrieve him later.
We headed over to the bridge to check out some trails.
What a fantastic view! This is surely a photo for the favourites file. :)