Christmas at the DSC

I had an absolutely fantastic day at the DSC yesterday, our second Winter Open Day. The weather was far better than last week, it actually snowed a little bit, was cloudy and therefore not quite as bitterly cold as  it would have been on a sunny day. It was damp and after about 6 hours outside it even goes through you no matter what and all of a sudden you feel chilled to the bone. First job of the day was to clean the Eastside with Steph, then it was time to rearrange some donkeys and the people started pouring in. We had one little incident with one of the minis, Sable totally freaked out and was just beside herself. Pansy, Poppy and Sable have been living with the main herd for the last few weeks, but since they are just such good little donkeys they will be brought over for Open Day, we kind of wanted to leave Sable over with the herd, because she is really timid around a lot of people and sometimes gets nervous, but she was not having any part of it, while Poppy and Pansy were on the visiting side, Sable was franticly running back and forth along the gate and fence and braying like crazy, she was in such  a frenzy, so finally we thought we better bring her over too, to calm her down, well in the meantime, Pansy and Poppy had made their way all the way to the top of the lane way and when Sable finally came over, she couldn't immediately see her two pals, and she panicked again, she was just running back and forth  crying for her friends, since there was no way to console Sable, I decided to go and try to get Pansy and Poppy to come back down, well we were about half way down, when Sable finally spotted her two pals she came running up to them and everything was ok again in Sable's little world. I have never seen Sable in such an uproar before, it was heartbreaking.

The day was filled with questions from visitors, seeing some familiar faces, like the young couple that came in the summer and sponsored Pansy, or the young woman and her dad who took amazing photos of her and the minis in the lane way all huddled up together. Lots of new people who had never been, and had tons of questions, people who came to visit their sponsored donkeys that we got for them from out the field. And lots of pictures to be taken. 

Cate was there too, so I got to work with her on some special things, like taking Tibet for a little walk, or feeding the Halfway Haven donkeys, which includes the family of minis, and the biggest chore of them all right now is filling up water buckets, since some of the water pipes are frozen,  we need to put hoses together to reach the buckets all over the farm, the hoses need then to be drained so they won't freeze too and well lets just say my fingers were so numb after playing in water in the freezing air for almost an hour. that it took a while to get feelings back into them. 

We had two new unofficial greeters at the Long Ear Boutique and I can't wait for my day on Wednesday  to have their company right at the door. They must have spent half the day there guarding the boutique.
Orly was my constant companion today as she knew I had candy canes in my coat pocket and was trying to get to them. It just is absolutely amazing how much the donkeys love peppermints. 

I received lots of donkey hugs from Chaplin today too, he is just such a sweetie, he just puts his head on your shoulder and starts to breath in your ear or lip your neck, very gently and soft. And when you pet his head he leans right into you. 

I also took my first orders for the mail orders home to mail out today. I am in charge now for any mail orders that come in through our quarterly newsletters. Awww something new again. 

Well it was a full day, a day full of hanging out with my great friends, furry and human. What a festive feeling and just so cozy and heartwarming.