Day 2 with a donkey

Today was a good day.


I woke up at 7 and determined to not go out there til 8 because I don't want Bellis expecting early breakfasts.

At 7:30 she brayed and I cringed. At 8:02 she brayed again and this time it was louder. I waited a few minutes before going out there to feed.

When I found both equines alive and well I took off her halter. I'd bought her a leather halter because I don't like the one she arrived with. I had to drill some holes (I have no holepunch) to make it fit - donkeys have really huge muzzles. Funny, the halter says PONY on it and it's too big for Baasha. That's Germany. I bought him a Shetland sized fly mask last week.

Anyway, I was pretty thrilled that Bellis mostly poops outside her stall. Not always but mostly.

In the afternoon I wanted to take both animals down to the hang to let them eat the profuse Spring grass down there. My  man helped me and took Baasha, while I had Bellis. I wanted to be sure Baasha wouldn't pester Bellis--he's already (pathologically) bonded to her and nickers to her if she makes any move. I don't want her to feel the need to defend herself against his craziness so my man helped out.

Funnily, Baasha dug right in to the grass (we've been going down there daily for a while now but I cannot leave him down there or else he'll destroy the baby trees), but Bellis was more interested in exploring. She wants to see this place of ours. She walked the fenceline and stared particularly long at the ponds down there. There's this huge round bale that rolled through two fences and through a little woods to land in one pond last Summer. It's so funny, and she thought it was interesting. I let her graze but she mostly just nibbled. She eats at about 1/5th the rate of Baasha, it's odd. I don't know if this is a donkey thing. At one point she really pulled on me, what I consider "rude" pulling so I pulled back and we had a tug of war for a couple minutes but I won. She can tug gently as I graze her on the line but dragging a human is not allowed. Finally my man let Baasha go because it was clear he was just eating and not being a pest. He would graze a bit away from her and then come trotting and nickering back, but he never got too close. The cat joined us and Bellis was very interested in Mercer. Thankfully Mercer realized it wasn't Baasha and jumped away. The donkey was grazing with her eyes and ears trained on the cat as long as the cat was near.

When it was time to go back to the paddock, Bellis came along with me very nicely, even though Baasha was following. Whew, I was worried about her leading but it seems to be good. She still needs to learn to swing her hindquarters over when I ask her to though.

I cleaned her hooves tonight and she's very good at that. I also washed her rump sore (from the horse trailer bar) with Betadine and warm water and then dried it with cotton pads and put neosporin on it. It's more of a rub than a cut but there is some blood, poor thing. I'm told she hates water and sure enough when I rinsed it by squeezing my cloth over it, letting water run over it, she walked away from me. I persisted and she was good and got some treats for letting me doctor her.

Her coat was pretty nappy from the rain in Hessen so I brushed her for about a half hour today. It's odd, the more I brushed, the more bits of bedding came out - she had bits of mini-straw embedded deep in her coat. She looks much fluffier now and a lot better, even with her donkey scruffy look. I wonder how much hair she'll lose as the season changes. I wonder if I'll ever be able to give her a bath. Probably not, and I guess donkey's don't need them. I will have to think of this equine like my cat. There's no way on earth I'd be able to give Mercer a bath.

Tonight Baasha guarded his beet pulp unnecessarily again, which gave me hope.

Bellis has a big birch tree that I cut down today and the first thing she did was eat the tips of all the branches off. That will keep her busy the next few days I think. Besides taking a towel down that I'd hung on the gate and chewing on it, she's pretty low impact so far. I would love to have two low-impact equines!

I don't know how long I will have to separate them. If you have experience introducing donkeys and horses please let me know what you do.

I'm giving Baasha lots of attention and lots of treats for tricks the last couple days, so he knows he's my number one still. I wish I had pictures or video of how he acted on the hang, it was so cute: eating happily, then trotting over, nickering, "Eveything OK? You're not going anywhere?" then he'd go on and eat more, and the cycle kept repeating.

So far so good. I'm looking forward to tomorrow. (The photo at the top is from last April.)