Generally if you get a warmer day in the winter, you work your tail end off outside to get as much done as possible. SO goes today.

First the ponies stayed in until noon, the windchill was -14 around 11, but right around noon the wind stopped and the sun got a little intense. So I let everyone out.

Now mind you, ponies that have been cooped up for over a day have a high rate of energy bottled up. So everyone was kicking up their heels, or hooves in this case, as I let each pony or pair of ponies out. Even the mares were a little friskie today!

Tulip decided to be 2 year old recently, and today she was in full 2 year old mode. Granted, she isn't officially 2 until June, but it seems kids and ponies seem to hit the terrible twos at about 18 months. Trust me I know, my friend Boogie's 18 month old just entered her terrible twos.

Tulip doesn't wear a halter right now, she is special. I have one other 'special' pony in the barn who doesn't have to wear a halter 24/7, Cowboy. For Tulip it is the result of her cutting herself under her right eye about 3 weeks ago. Trust me, you don't want an open face wound in sub zero weather. The injury itself was a pain in the butt to fix because of the weather - we super glued it which is protocol since it was just a big skin tear. But the super glue, which is supposed to adhere to anything and rather quickly, did not want to adhere and did not want to dry. I believe it was way too cold, but we got it to work anyways.

Okay so I was trying to figure out if Tulip had gotten kicked, or what. I walked the pasture and found on the open gate (I took the dividing gate down between the mares and the fillies for the winter so they could share one water tank) and found on one of the hinges blood and hair. So it goes to say, she had an itch, was scratching it, but got hooked or something. So since she likes to scratch, her halter is now a deadly weapon and she can't have it on.

Cowboy has the same issue. Leave a halter on the boy for 5 minutes and he will have his face bloody.

Okay so back to Tulip. She decided she wanted to go out, but not with any aides, including her mommie. She didn't want to put her halter on. Maybe she thought she would merrily go her own way out the door, but something tells me we would have to visit every single stall before finding the barn door with help. Thus we have to have a halter and lead.

She ducked the first time I tried to put it on her. Then dove for the gate to her stall. She stood so close to the gate and stall wall, I couldn't even get in edgewise. Stinker.

I started to move to her head and she jumped back and turned her butt to me. Gave a little humpy hump. I thought 'Huh, lil spunky this am'. Somehow she thought since she got away with the humpy hump, a little kick would drive the point home. But out of the corner of her eye, she saw how annoyed I quickly became. She jumped to the back of the stall. I popped her side slightly. Not exactly the spanking I needed to deliver, but nonetheless, she got the point. She about faced and walked up to me. Stuck her nose out. I lifted the halter and she side swiped it and laid her head on my chest. Okay now I am wondering - did I teach her that?! I don't remember teaching her that! I do remember thinking if she got much taller she might be a pain in the tuckuss to halter, but I don't remember teaching her to lay her head against my chest!

I did take advantage of the situation, well kinda, and haltered her. Then led her to the barn door. Oh My OH my, we wanted to do aires above ground, but the lead and mommie were telling her she had to walk, nicely. And so we did, reservedly.

Opal wasn't much better - she bucked and kicked almost all the way to the barn door. I pulled her up short and popped the lead. She stopped and set up and the look on her face was priceless -'Who me?! What did I do?!

Everyone else filed out fairly well.

A nice show was put on by the babies, Cookie and Lady. Seems Cookie likes not having her training wheels on. She was cutting corners pretty wickedly and even took a few trips through the deep snow. I stood and watched for a few minutes. Lady and Cookie took turns running up to me to get kisses and 'ata girls' and then sped off again.

So on with the morning chores. I decided I needed to clean buckets, at least most of them. So I had to empty them all, but 3. Clean them and return them to their posts. I also did a full barn clean again. And finally, since there was no wind, burned the mount Everest of grain bags sitting in the doorway.

After a bit, I took an hour break and made some return calls and emails. Went back out, switched stallions so Cowboy was out, and turned Arnold loose while I finished stalls.

Arnold is my 'little boy'. He is the oldest of the stallions, but he stands a mere 20 inches. Don't let that fool you though, he thinks he is king. He has issues with his feet, so he can't do a lot of walking around outside in the snow, especially if there is ice underneath lurking to trip a pony up. The floor of my barn has 4 inches of sand, with hay on top. A nice playground for him to run and buck and kick it out in the winter. He visits with his buddy Shiner and has made a new friend in the junior stallion, Smokie. He makes the rounds of all the pens to smell good smells and look for lost treasures that have been mindlessly dropped by the other ponies. But his favorite thing-- is to roll in front of Shiner's pen and make Shiner all jealous that he can't just run loose in the barn.

While I was cleaning, I did notice a couple ponies let loose of some worms, so I might have to pop them again in a week. Just to make sure this variety has been taken care of. I run a pretty tight ship on the worming schedule. Once a month with a rotation schedule. Have to on such a small farm. Re-infestation is too easy.

I brought the babies in an hour ahead of schedule. I had thought that Cookie had been missing some of her grain. She shares her stall with her sister, Lady. Lady is twice the size of Cookie. Goes to show, Lady needs more grain, or so she thinks. So I am trying to bring them in ahead of the rest and put them in separate stalls, give Cookie time to eat what she wants. Tonight Lady plowed through her grain and was unhappy for the next 50 minutes. Cookie steadily ate with a nice look of contentment on her face. And she ate all her food! Go Cookie!

With all that and the cold weather, I didn't work on any manes or tails. I did find a leave in conditioner, but its water based, so I am thinking it will just freeze. Otherwise, I think it will be a good conditioner for the spring entering into the first part of May.

Tomorrow I have to grind up flax seed and get the ponies on their flax seed. It's been almost 10 days since I started on the soy oil, so they can have it added in now.

Let me tell you, this has saved me countless hours of elbow grease - this combination puts a shine on the ponies like nobody's business. I hardly use any product and they are slick. This year I am going to try to stay ahead of clipping, so all I need to do is a wash three days ahead and hopefully at shows, just put finished touches on. Instead of cold showers in the am!