All on a sunny Sunday!

I was to attend a meeting at the DSC this morning around ten to just talk about a Sunday Volunteer Program. I got there at 9:30 so I grab a wheel barrow and pooper scooper and went to work. I ended up going up to Halfway Haven to help Steph clean up there. When we got there, Misty was locked in a stall with no food and water and she was very unhappy, not sure why she was in there, Steph called Adam on his day off to find out as to why. Adam was as puzzled as anybody but said that it had happened before...apparently she goes in there sometimes to rest and the other donkeys close the door on her and she can't get back out. Those little buggers. I cleaned one of the stalls, met the new donkey Chaplin, who is full of beans but cute and was then of to my meeting at the office. The meeting wasn't very long, as Cheryl is very organized at to what she wants and it was more or less just to set up a schedule on who is covering what Sunday. I will have to brush up on my grooming skills, as I have not done a complete grooming since probably April due to all the other things that I was involved in. So I will have to step it up a notch! Just before we started our meeting Paul, our fence guy, came to the office just to say that he is taking lumber down to the fence line of the back paddock. He said he didn't need any help with watching the donkeys as he has done it many times before. We were just wrapping up our meeting and getting ready to leave as Paul come back to the office and yells "donkey loose". Well donkey loose is not really a problem, because usually they don't really go that far, they just want to graze on the other side of the fence...when we got to the parking lot we saw a problem lol....it was Hershey... one of our hardest to catch donkeys, one of our most mischievous donkeys. So we tried to block him in on the parking lot so he couldn't run onto the driveway. Helia went down to the barn to get Steph. We were able to scoot Hershey into the area of the Welcome Centre, and when he saw Steph with the halter he was on the move, thank god in the right direction and we could direct him down the pathway by the boutique into at least the barnyard. There we cornered him of in an area too and Steph was able to put a halter on him and walk him back to his side. So that was the excitement of the day.

We went down to the barn and cleaned some more, Helia took the new volunteers around and showed them the ropes and I actually got to groom Buffy, who was oddly not very cooperative, especially when it came to her feet, but I got them all done and off she went out into the pasture. 

Since it was a nice an sunny day and I had brought my camera and list of donkeys to take certain pictures of, I ventured out into the main herd to get some of those done. Being among all the donkeys out in their domain I find always a little bit intimidating, there is so much to watch for, most important thing to watch for ...is charging Hershey, but he seemed to be calm and happy to be grazing after his morning adventure, but Hershey has been known to stalk people out there and charge at them for no apparent reason. I found some of the donkeys that I needed from this side, and took a few other pictures of ones that just were good photo opps in my opinion....like this one of Panne overlooking his domain. He stood there for the longest time just like a statue, totally still, with eyes and ears forward.

Then I went back to the barn side and took pictures of the donkeys I needed from there. And of course even there were some other donkey photo opps. And I took a picture of our two peas in a pod....our very challenging donkeys that are right now kept away from the main herd, because they are so hard to handle and a little bit dangerous to be around. So they get a lot of one on two attention by staff to try to train them for easier  handling.  These are Juliet and Donny, and as I said two peas in a pod, both have the same temperament, sweet as can be one minute, aggressive and very assertive the next minute, so you just never know. They look sweet and innocent, don't they?

                                        

I found Chiclet sleeping in the sun, totally relaxed, he didn't even blink an eye when I approached or flinched....just snoozing away...

  

Orly was soaking up some sun too....

While others came to investigate...like...

Summer, our senior and animal barn manager

and Chaplin, our newest donkey

I was ready to leave by 2:30 pm but was held up at the fence for at least another hour just watching and mingling and scratching ears and butts...

Visiting with Cocoa

...and Amigo

Like always it was hard to say good-bye to those sweet faces, but I will be back tomorrow and Sunday...woo hoo!