My Private Christmas Mornings

Opening the barn door, in the morning, just after sunrise, is always an intriguing gamble. You never know what you will be walking into. Take this morning for instance. I opened the barn door and cooed my normal 'Morning Babies, its just me', which normally promotes rustling of hooves, shifting of weight, which is incredibly audible, and rattling of feed pans or water buckets, whichever is handiest, and the wonderful sound of nickers. All this excitement reeks of Christmas morning and tiny tots with presents galore. And I get this every morning-- okay well most mornings.

If you recall, I put up a 10X16 stall and the two weanling (now considered yearlings) fillies in there. Of course, rushing the night before against the impeccable timing of the sun going down - I only tied their gates to their respective poles to secure their settings.

This morning I opened the door, all to my private Christmas morning, finding all the normalcy in the world with one exception. Many of the ties that secured the gates of the fillies stalls were dangling loosely from their posts. And a surprised filly with a yellow tie hanging from her mouth. Lady had too much time or too much energy on her hands. I am not quite sure, but after checking out the gates and fillies out, there was no foul play, just good old fashioned fun for them.

I took the yellow tie out of her mouth and congratulated her on staying 'in' all night and not letting herself out to play. And then made the promise that I would fix her wagon as soon as possible.

As the day waned, I found myself in front of a not too happy boy. His stall was the last to get mucked out from the previous weeks deep freeze. You might ask, how do I know he was unhappy with his stall - well he had a nice little pile of hay that he decided to use as a pee box in front of his stall. And it was rank by the time I mucked it all out. When I brought my little boy back in, he was delighted again as he had a fresh bale of shavings laid out waiting for him, and he didn't waste a moment of his time taking in the indulgence laid before him. He was fully clothed in shavings in a matter of seconds and a sigh of happiness escaped his carriage into the air.

Tulip - now my Tulip - got her real first spanking for not listening to WHOA today. I was adding water to her bucket and the gate was left open with enough temptation for her to try to rush by. She tried it twice and I told her WHOA twice and back up once. Which she did. But the temptation got the better of her and she blasted past me. Of course me, I had a bucket of water I was pouring into her stall mates bucket, which spilled all over the place and I was almost knocked off my feet. She didn't go far, just down the way to her other friend's stall, whom had her ration of alfalfa hay for the night.

I had a thought that she was starving. I went over to her and she let me catch her right off the bat. I scolded her. Started to lead her back and she stopped dead in her tracks. Well that's when the 'pop' came. It surprised her and she decided following me would be better than being 'popped'. So we went back to her stall. When I put her in, the stall not as open as when she rushed out, was still a bit of a temptation, so we had a 'No you can't rush out the stall door' talk. And it left her in a state of 'Gosh - I need to think about this'. And so I closed her stall door and let her.

Between my own private Christmas mornings and disciplining of children, it seems my days are full and never dull.