Forever Home Donkey Rescue

Sunday we had a great bunch of kids come out to visit the donkeys, along with their teachers & chaperons. Everyone seemed to have a good time, including the donkeys of course. They are all developing their little "tricks of the trade" to get the visitors to feed or pet them. Some of them have started braying, if they think the people aren't getting to their pen fast enough. The four that are fed outside weren't in pens & in fact Lucy, Daisy & Buster never showed up, don't know where they were. But Frijolita made sure she was available for interacting with the kids. She really has a wonderful personality, & has jumped into tours like an old pro.
Today we had friends we hadn't seen for awhile come by for the afternoon. They gave Bennie & Nina a wonderful home a couple of years ago & live a couple of hours away, so we don't get to visit very often. We shared donkey stories & really had a good time wandering around looking for donkeys. Actually most of them found us & checked us out to see if we had treats. I don't know if there is a more food orientated animal than a donkey. We didn't, but they hung around for pets & scratches. They found out Susan will give butt scratches, & that's almost as good as food. We ended up in the garage looking at 40 years of racing pictures & trophies & Lucy came all the way into the garage to see what we were doing. This is really a break thru, Lucy has been here over 5 years & just in the last couple of months has shown animation & actual interest in her surroundings. She was probably a roping donkey & when she mentally shut down was used to breed more donkeys. She very rarely showed emotion of any kind. But lately she has had a sparkle in her eyes & shown a curiosity she's never had before. I was really surprised to see her walk confidently into the garage & walk right up to us, to see if we were doing anything interesting. She stood with us for quite sometime, & only left when we did. It's really great to watch them gain confidence & be secure in their surroundings again.

Tonight when John let them out of the pens, he forgot to open Burroland. I went over to open it, & found a herd of disgruntled equine at the gate. In fact I almost couldn't even get to the gate to open it because of the crowd. Daisy was standing behind the gate, & once I opened it a little bit, Jenny got on the other side & started banging on it, which meant it was hitting me & Daisy. I don't know why she just didn't go thru the gate, I finally had to go around the gate & push her away. Then I had to go around & get Daisy out from behind the gate. By this time the horsey group, showed up, & when I started back across the wash, poor old Pepper was crippling along, heading for a night of adventure. Poor old guy, his legs are just about gone, but he keeps moving. This morning everyone had shown up but Pepper. John said look over across the wash, & here came Pepper hobbling back from Burroland. I wish I could find something to help him move better, but so far nothing seems to help much.

Tomorrow will be fly mask day I guess. We've been putting masks on the ones with one eye & Rusty the mule that has pink skin around his eyes the last couple of weeks. It's getting pretty warm, in the 90's today & the flies are starting to be a nuisance to all of them. We use fly predators & fly traps, which helps a lot, but nothing is 100%. So everyone will get masks tomorrow, except maybe BlackJack. Can't keep one on him, Buddy Brat thinks they are toys, & BlackJack encourages him. Daisy's Mom called today, & said she's never had a mask on. Daisy's pretty mellow, so I don't anticipate her being a pill about a fly mask. I haven't noticed the flies bothering her, she has so much hair on her face, so she might not even need a mask.