Louie and Easter Goat

Tracy found a coyote den near the boy's turnout. That would be what has kept them so alert and on guard lately.  Ms. Easter goat better watch herself..... speaking of, I had Louie on the cross ties this evening and Easter was hanging out in the barn aisle. She came up in front of Louie, rears up and butts Louie right in the head. (his head was down as he was sniffing at her) Poor Louie didn't know what to do and I had to run interference as she went for a second butt! She is some lucky that Louie is so tolerant of other animals. I was sure he would strike out with his front feet just out of self defence. I hope she never tries that with Prize as he will likely squash her!


Getting the boys out of their turnout today was quite interesting. It was cold today and had been raining. So, it was a solid sheet of ice right there at the gate especially on the gate handle side. I could NOT walk into the turnout there. After some thought, I came up with an idea that I was sure would go awry, and in a big way but wasn't sure what else to do. Soooooo, I went down the fence line and climbed through the fence. The boys followed me thankfully. I put their halters on, tossed lead ropes over their necks and then I climbed back out and went to the gate. The boys followed me back. I got as close as I could to the gate, reached over, got the lines unhooked, tossed them out of the way and just quickly backed up onto better footing praying I'd be able to grab both boys as they came by me. By some stroke of fortune, this actually worked! Though it was so slippery, the boys were not thinking about running off or escaping, they were too busy just trying to stay on their feet.

I had planned to ride but as soon as I got Louie in his stall, he rolled and the shaving all stuck to his wet coat. Now that was not really a problem but then I took him out into the arena and lunged him and he rolled out there and was just covered with arena sand. I tried to brush him off but only seemed to be driving the sand into his coat. So, we just did some fetching (much to Bart's delight), bowing and lunging. We worked on backing and sidepassing. At one point as I was lunging, Louie kept spinning and facing me, bug eyed and blowing. That's when I realized that the cat was chasing the end of my lunge line! Once Louie figured out it was just the cat, he wanted to play so I was dragging the lunge line across the arena, the cat was chasing the lunge line and Louie was following the cat with his nose on it's butt. Where is a video camera when you need it! LOL