All I need to know in life I learned from my horses

 

The Lazy Bunch (Willem, Evie, Naloma)

 

I’ve stolen these words from Grey Horse Matters’ blog.

All I need to know in life I learned from my horses - Vol. 1

1. When in doubt, run far, far away.
2. You can never have too many treats.
3. Passing gas in public is nothing to be ashamed of.
4. New shoes are an absolute necessity every 6 weeks.
5. Ignore cues; they're just another prompt to do more work.
6. Everyone loves a good, wet, slobbery kiss.
7. Never run when you can trot.
8. Never trot when you can walk.
9. And never walk when you can stand still.
10. Heaven is eating at least 10 hours a day...and then sleeping the rest.

 

All I need to know in life I learned from my horses - Vol. 2

1. Eat plenty of roughage.
2. Great legs and a nice rear will get you anywhere in life. Big, brown eyes help too.
3. When you want your way, stomp hard on the nearest foot.
4. In times of crises, take a poop.
5. Act dumb when faced with a task you don't want to do.
6. Follow the herd, that way you can't be singled out to take the blame.
7. A swift kick in the butt will get anyone's attention.
8. Love those who love you back, especially if they have something good to eat.
9. Leather and chains can make anyone look studly.
10. Happiness is a warm, fuzzy blanket and someone to share it with.

Sunday Selections: another love edition

Last week I chose LOVE as a theme, because our Sunday Selections host Kim from Frogpondsrock’s daughter just got married. I found so many LOVEly photos in my files that I had enough for another LOVE edition.

So, here they are:

 

A LOVEly meeting between dog and foal. (They still are attracted to each other. Holle (dog) often licks Evie’s nose. Awww.)

 

The love between Naloma and Evie.

 

Our lovely Holle.

 

Hubs and Evie having an intimate get together.

 

This is just weird.

 

I really don’t love, or even like, my photo being taken. In fact, I don’t even want to look at photos of myself. But this self-portrait I could almost love. Should have cleaned the window though, before I took this shot.

 

Naloma loves being hugged. And no, she doesn’t have 7 legs and two tails.

 

Synchronized love.

 

Yep, there is the ‘horse kisser’ again. He loves (kissing) his horses.

 

They love each other and I know that our Sunday Selections host, Kim from Frogpondsrock, loves them.

On the search for these LOVEly photos, I found a lot of photos that will fit another theme next week. Be prepared for lots of chuckles and awwws.

A close shave

written by Naloma (let us just pretend)

Look. My human says that I look like a Shetland pony, but behave like a thoroughbred. I don’t know about the thoroughbred, but I am way above a Shetland pony.

And then she said: “We’re going to do something about that incredibly furry coat of yours today.”

So she and the man human got out the clipping thing and started clipping my nice, shiny and warm coat. Oh, I don’t mind. I quite enjoy the tickling sensation. But I’m not sure they know what they’re doing. What do you think?

Does it look anything like the picture in the book yet?

There didn’t seem to be a method to their madness. Clipping a bit here and then a bit there. Handing the machine over to each other. And she kept giggling and taking photos with her iPod. I didn’t have much confidence that the end result would be something I could be seen with in public.

Oh man! I don’t want to look.

I don’t suppose it can be glued back again?

I feel so… naked.

But it could have been worse. It could. Couldn’t it? With a bit of imagination one could think I’m wearing sexy stockings. This is my sexy walk.
I can tell you are impressed.
They even managed to do the other side of me almost exactly the same. Okay, you’ll have to believe me on my word.

This, that and the other

First I’d like to thank you all for thinking of Hans and me and sending us good thoughts, prayers, positive energy etc. It really helps to know that so many people care. We’re Teflon coated by positivity now, so everything bad just has to slide off immediately.

THIS
Hubs’ case nurse, Jitty (who seems to be quite relaxed, even though her name suggests otherwise), turns out to be a little gem. She managed to twist some arms so hubs will have his MRI scan this Friday after all. In stead of a week later. So we will hear the good news (provided his Teflon coating works) Tuesday next week. The best news would be that the cancer hasn’t spread and that they’ll only have to remove a small portion of his colon to get rid of the tumour.

We’ll see.

THAT
And now for something totally different: salads. I had a salad on the menu for tonight. With some Nasturtium flowers from my vegetable patch I thought. And then this morning, or it could have been this afternoon, I visited Jabblog who had a post about a beautiful looking, and no doubt very tasty, summer salad. With Nasturtium flowers! And Pansy flowers too. Some people just exaggerate things. Anyway, I told her that we would be having a similar salad tonight and that I’d post some photos of it. So…

Salad leaves, toasted pine nuts and walnuts, Nasturtium flowers and a dressing made of extra virgin olive oil, Balsamic vinegar, mustard and honey. Doesn’t only look good, tastes nice too.

THE OTHER
Or should I say: the others. Some of the others anyway. This is part of our private zoo:

Tumtum, in half winter/half summer coat (summer coat = bald) is looking at us, Nufnuf is just in front of him inspecting the box hedge. Naloma is in the first stable, Evie in the second (from your left).

And next to Evie is Willem.

No you’re not drunk, or maybe you are, but if you were sober you’d also see the wall leaning. It’s not the wall. It’s the camera. Or actually; it’s not the camera either and I wasn’t drunk when I took the photo. I can honestly say I’m never drunk. But this is far too much information. I could have just Photoshopped the photo straight, but it is 30 degrees Celsius and I couldn’t be bothered. In real life the wall is straight. There. That’s what I wanted to say.

And look, we have a little chick. Its (we don’t know yet if it is a he or a she) mom is one of our brown chickens and she’s in there with him, just not in the photo. We’ve put the both of them into a run and their (con)temporary home is a travel box for the cats. They like it in there. Chick is too small to go up and down the ladder in the big coop yet. But when he'/she is a little bigger, we’ll put the both of them back with the rest of the family and keep them all locked up for a while in their coop and run. Hopefully it is a ‘she’, so she can stay with us. Otherwise I’m afraid he’ll end up in someone’s soup ;-(

Sunday Selections for Kim

This Easter Sunday my Selections are especially for Kim from Frogpondsrock, who also hosts this meme. If you have photos hanging around on your computer, doing nothing, and you’d like to post them but haven’t found a reason yet, you can always join the Sunday Selections.

So Kim… I hope this is sort of what you’re looking for… (it’s my ‘she’ and she’s called Naloma).

Do these help Kim?

Sunday Selections

Hosted by Kim from Frogpondsrock. Finally a good excuse to post those photos that are hanging around aimlessly in all those folders on your computer.

This birch has interesting bark…

…and an interesting face? Big nose though.

These dried flowers of the Hydrangea aspera look like lace.

It’s not as sharp as I’d like it to be; it was quite a windy day. Oh I know the background is blurred, but that is deliberate. But the foreground could have been crisper too. I’ll have to try again, on a nice and calm day, to make a decent shot of these beauties.

And how did that horse sneak into this post?

Sunday Selections

Some time ago I decided that I wouldn’t join memes anymore, because: a) it takes so much time to visit everyone else on the list and b) it started to feel like too much pressure to come up with something original every week, but then I visited Jay at the Depp Effect and she joined this great new meme: Sunday Selections. A meme, started by Kim over at Frogpondsrock, that ‘allows’ you to post those photos that have been sitting in folders on your computer, doing nothing. Waiting for an opportunity to be shared with others.

Now, I think this is a wonderful excuse to bore you with more of my photos, so I’ve decided to join this meme.

You see: my best photos, or the photos that I consider to be my best up till now (because I haven’t taken my best photo yet; I haven’t even taken a really good one yet, but as long as there is life there is hope) I put up on my photo blog (link can be found at the bottom of this blog). Photos that can illustrate a story or just seem to be suitable for my ‘normal’ (using the term ‘normal’ very loosely here) blog I put up here. And yet there are more photos I don’t want to throw away, but that are not suited for posting either. Unless there is a really good reason. And this meme is a good reason. So… here they are: photos that did not have a purpose until now. If that isn’t a happy ending… Or a happy beginning?

Evie & Willem

Naloma

Don’t worry, they won’t all be horsey photos. Just wanted to get these ones of our horses ‘of my chest’ so to speak.

So, if you have folders full of photos on your computer and haven’t found a good excuse to post them yet, here’s your chance: visit Frogpondsrock and join Sunday Selections.

Very entertaining…

Somewhere underneath this funky hairdo…

…you’ll find a little pony called Jimmy.

He belongs to our very dear friends and their two little girls who were willing to demonstrate their pony handling and riding skills to us last Sunday. The lady in pink, yes, the one wearing the helmet, was supposed to show us how incredibly well she can ride Jimmy so she got all dressed up for the occasion. But she kindly offered to let her little sister go first. She actually said: “can my little sister go first mommy?”, which I though was very sweet. (If it had been me, my little sister probably wouldn’t have been allowed to even look at MY pony without me screaming and punching my little sister on the nose! But then again I could only dream of having my own pony and I don’t have a little sister. I’m slightly jealous of little people with little ponies.)

And then she showed us how to ride up and down steps…

…and her mom showed that she can ‘run like the wind’ while preventing daughter from bouncing off her little pony. Very entertaining.

Meanwhile, in the sky directly above us…

… an ultralight airplane was doing some stunts.
Also very entertaining. At first we thought something wasn’t quite right when we saw the black smoke coming out, but we heard the pilot shout ‘WHOOHOOOOO’ and it didn’t sound like a terrified scream.

And on Saturday we had a visit from the vet again. This time because Naloma managed to get a very big hole in her bottom lip. How? I don’t know. But it needed stitching. Not so much entertaining in the fun sense, but it certainly kept us busy for a while. Fortunately it wasn’t a hole through her lip, but it certainly was a gaping wound. And the top bit had a couple of smaller wounds and was really swollen. I put clay on it, the whitish stuff, because it disinfects and cools.

See how swollen it was? I took these photos on Sunday. It looks much more normal now. In about a week or two the stitches can come out. It will heal nicely the vet said (while probably mentally working out what kind of new car he’s going to buy).