Spectacular donkey spook and some pics from 10 years ago

Bellis and I took a lovely walk today where she showed me her ever-better manners on the lead line. I'm feeling pretty proud of myself, but she shook me up to remind me what pride goes before.

I was looking for a geocache of my husband's, to do maintenance on it, and Star Island the Standie and Ibn the Arab were watching us, snorting long scary snorts and prancing around, "What is that creature!?" Oh, had they never seen us before?

I had tied to donkey to the tie tree, a small Beech with about a 5 inch diameter and a nice horizontal branch to keep the rope up high. I mention this because that poor tree was tested today for the first time. I've tied both Mara and the donkey there many times.

As I looked for the cache, the donkey fussed and pawed, and I laughed at her, "That doesn't help." But finally found it deeply hidden in the holly, with camouflage tape so it was almost invisible. Nice, J!

As I returned to the donkey a Springer Spaniel was coming up the trail toward us. I don't know why, but for some reason the donkey lost her mind.

She spooked hard sideways and I jumped out of the way to safety. Then she jumped the other way and tried running but hit the end of the rope. I had not been overly careful in how I'd tied her, but it was sufficient, thankfully, and she failed at escape. The tree, halter, and rope all held.

The dog's owner said, "Scared of dogs?" I said, "Well not until just now!"

How very strange.

Then I realized that had she not been tied to that tree, I would have 1. lost her 2. been thrown into the holly, and 3. lost all the skin on both my hands.

It wasn't a scary experience, it was just eye opening to me. The donkey has never spooked that badly. It shows me how insecure she is living alone, she's very slowly becoming less placid.

I'd always been curious if my rope halter knot would tighten impossibly when tested, and I was glad it was easy to release. I guess my knot is OK after all.

That was the bad part of the walk.

The good part was finally the donkey allowed me to tie her up in the Aldi parking lot and go shopping (very quickly!) for my husband's chocolate. I didn't think I could do that without her braying and shattering the glass of the store. I grabbed a few kohlrabi leaves (there is always a pile of them, people don't want them) and as soon as I came out of the store, I saw her peering at the people in the parking lot, then I saw her recognize me and she started vocalizing, but not braying. I paused and said, "Shut up or I'll leave again." She shut up and got her kohlrabi leaves. Baasha used to get Haribo but I'm on a diet so it's kohlrabi for her. Interesting how she could pick me out of all those people at a distance.

As I waited in line in Aldi, two people brought out their cell phones and photographed her. Novelty!

Good that I'd raked her coat free of mud before hand.

Good donkey. Now that I know she can handle it, we'll do it more often.

I don't have any photos to share, but I backed us my photos yesterday and found a few to share from the past.


My friend Brandi and I stayed a weekend at a horse ranch called Silver Ridge just 70 miles east of Seattle in the Cascades. Aarene, I think you know these people? She's looking at my coffee because I used to share everything with her, even Top Ramen.



My sweet perfect endurance mare, completely fit and loaded up for a full day of riding. I have no idea why I have a travel mug in my hand, I don't normally ride with travel mugs. Although I hate cameras, I'm thankful to Brandi for making me pose before our ride. When you get old you appreciate how you looked when you were not old. BTW, I still have all that tack, including the stupid little sponge bag. So much tack, so little horse....




What the ranch map calls an airport is well, this field I'm riding on. It's wonderful to ride a horse and have complete perfect trust in it. Every horse lover deserves to build and enjoy this trust.



This was the second time J came to America: Oct 2006. He'd already ridden the mare 5 hours on Tiger mountain on his first trip in July. By now they're good friends as you can see (check out her relaxed nose/mouth). We're about to do an Orienteering ride here, which J excelled at. I'm pretty sure this is Elbe, Sahara horse camp.

2006 was the year we met and fell in love and flew back and forth to see each other til that got tiresome. 10 years!



She's asking for a treat I think. I would like to think that the mare and I had a special bond, but honestly she was the perfect horse for anyone who got on her back. Of course, doing lots of 50s, you get to know each other. She was the kind of horse that knew exactly how far 50 miles is, and got faster and more motivated all day, after amazing people with her "laziness" over the start line. Push-button horse. I never had to get up so early to warm her up, I just used the first few miles of trail as a warm up, at a walk, because I knew she would, actually walk calmly. I was lazy, she was lazy, but we got some top 10s. Did I tell you how she once left the trail, and all the horses cruising along, because she was thirsty and sensed water? She eventually found a little creek, drank, and then got back to work. That's reciprocal trust: if she was going to leave the herd, I knew she had to have a reason. But not to sound arrogant, I did nothing to better this horse, she was just that way.

OK she had one bad habit that I hope to have helped her with. She loved to smash against you as you groomed her, to get a look at something. Year after year I corrected her, but she always had that little inkling in her, "I'm gonna make you move." So, not 100% perfect afterall.

J is no rider, but had a blast on her, because she was a true push button horse. She had a pretty good spook in her, but usually you could ride it. I only came off her once, because she loves to take shortcuts onto deer trails and she took one with me with no warning at all at speed. I always said about her, she spooks like an Arab with the agility of a QH! (She's a Quarab if you cannot tell.) I sure miss her, thankfully I have lots of pictures. She proved to me forever that there is nothing wrong with being red + a mare.

Not that I'm shopping for one at the moment though... : ): )