Tonight on the pasture

I'm having so much fun after work each evening. I go out there and spend a couple hours just hanging out at pasture with the equines and then they follow me in and get separated for a few hours so Baasha can have his mash/hay/personal time - and tonight I gave Bellis a few handfuls of bedding pellets to eat. Yah, she eats the bedding which costs about the same as the grain. This is why I have to use mini-straw with her and no pellets.

Tonight she taught Baasha to eat the tiny branches of the hazelnut and apple trees hanging over the pasture fence. So cute! Soon they'll be all nicely trimmed and it will be easier for me and Carsten's tractor to go by.

Then I stripped Baasha's blanket and started grooming him (and I sprayed him with my ultra-expensive German flyspray - the first fly spray I've bought here, ugh, it's 25E!). As I groomed him he started grooming Bellis (the first time I've seen him do this at pasture) and Bellis started trying to groom me in a circle of grooming. I kept having to move away and move around Baasha to the other side. She started to groom him a little but is obviously not comfortable doing that yet. He kept grooming her even when I stopped. Finally he has an animal to chew on and not us. Lately he's started nibbling on our shirts and leaning his teeth into us like Kate's Dawn does. He bruised my man doing this, very bad, and I thought once he had a buddy it would help. I cannot wait to see them groom each other someday.

They're getting along better, there is no sign of stress from Baasha the last few days. He nickers a little after her when she's slow to follow him (he leads now!) but not urgently.

I am learning to really like this donkey. She sees me, she comes. She follows. Tonight as I groomed the pasture, she did what can be described as "heeling" - stopping when I stopped, glued to my side.

So here are some photos of us tonight. You can see how often she approaches me. How close she wants to be. I'm teaching her it's OK to get very close, but NOT OK to force me to take a step back, which almost inevitably happens. She still puts everything in her mouth.

I really need someone to get a photo of how she cuddles with me. I offer her my arms and she lays her head in them. It's so sweet, that she trusts me so much. I rub her face; I'm learning how - her eyelids, ears, the underside of her face.

I also groomed the heck out of her last night and it's like having a cross between a German Shepherd and a double-long shag carpet. Bellis was in bliss as I did this. I thought by shaving Baasha I'd get out of this but here I am with my GSD/carpet equine. I look forward to what lies beneath.

My man just called as I type this and he said as he left for work this morning the two of them were lying down in the pasture together. I'm so glad they're doing this!