Being peed on is only funny to the one it's not happening to 😂

Sep 21, 2024

Happy Saturday friends!

As you know, I've been deep in all the struggles lately but this week was better. I've been crying a lot, which seems a weird thing to equate to "better" but in my world, a lack of emotion is something to be concerned about as it's not my norm! I'm missing Mom and Rayn like crazy and it feels like I don't have my tether to my animals or the other side for that matter. It's so weird. I've decided to spend more time outside among the trees and the animals.

Friday morning I took each donkey and Wynter into the coaching barn separately to try to reconnect with them. At first Sweetness didn't want to have anything to do with me so I let him back out and went back to morning chores. When I was done Wynter was standing at the gate so I talked to him over the gate for awhile. He kept putting his head over mine, from one shoulder to the other, side to side...hmmm...clearing my crown chakra maybe? But at the time he was also quivering his lip and what popped into my mind was that he missed mutual grooming with Rayn. So I brought him into the barn, gave him a hay bag, got my stool (he's very tall!) and started grooming him with my hands. In the last few years, Rayn got to the point that she didn't even really like brushes on her body so I started grooming with just my hands. We both enjoyed that. I love the feeling of their fur and I can just as easily get dried mud off of them with my fingers as I can with a brush. For those of you who are not very farmy, yes, that means that my hands and fingernails are filled with mud and worse but that's what a nail brush and soap are for ;-) As I was working on Wynter I was thinking how much harder it is for me to hear him. He's very "drafty" (half big, slow Percheron draft horse and half speedy Thoroughbred race horse but the draft is the stronger side) and my connection to him is so much slower than with Rayn. All I had to do with Rayn was think something and she would respond. After my mind mulling that over for awhile, he said, "Maybe you could learn a new way."

Oh.

Haha.

Yes, I could do that couldn't I? Maybe instead of wailing and moaning and rolling around in sackcloth and ashes, I could try a new way. Maybe the communication is slower because that is his way or maybe the slowness is because I don't know how to do it his way yet.

After that Sweetness came to connect and did his ocean sounding breath and telling me of his grief over losing Rayn:

And finally Jaffee came by, not for communication but just for chest scratches. He's been here a year now and while I don't hear from him very often yet, he has softened so much.

Sometimes love and connection are immediate like with Rayn and Brad and ManChild and sometimes they take time. It's the ones that take time that are harder for me. Something to practice.

•••

ART:

Another new piece of art, based on a photo of Rayn that a friend took. Back in Colorado when I had baby goat yoga classes, I would take the group into the horse pasture afterwards. The sweetest interactions would happen:

So I created this 12x16 mixed media piece:

•••

THE RANCH:

B-Rad and I were out doing chores on Friday morning when I heard cussing and yelling and then laughter and groaning. He was with the boy goats, I was with the girls on the other side of the pasture. I poked my head out of the barn and yelled, "You okay?"

"He PEED on me!"

Oh dear...😂🤮😂

Boy goats in rut are something kinda otherworldly. Besides the crazy sounds, they pee all over the place, but mostly on themselves. Case in point:

It looks like Poppy had a mud bath and his hair is all clumped together but that's not mud...

The girl goats thought B-Rad smelled amazing:

A long time ago, I had a dog that just adored me, much like the Polar Bear does. His name was Shadow because he was mine :-) He came from a Border Collie rescue and we were his failed foster family. He claimed me while we were on the drive back home, I looked back in the rear view and there he was, staring back at me in the mirror and I just knew he was ours. One day we were at a festival and we had the dogs with us. Shadow was still pretty new to us. There were dogs all around and while Brad and I were standing around, figuring out where we wanted to go, I felt something warm and wet running down my leg and into my shoe. Shadow had decided to mark his territory: me. 🙄😂😳

Wasn't he a handsome boy though?

The joys of having animals. Dog pee is a lot easier to get out of socks and shoes than buck pee though. B-Rad's shoes will have to stay outside for all of eternity!

•••

Sunset at the farm:

My little slice of "big sky":

Instead of writing a ton this week, I thought I would give you a little 5 minute video of our week, complete with tons of hurricane rain, the deer herd in our forest, chores, dogs, and stinky bucks. You can see it HERE!

THE MEMES:

First! ManChild has found the love of the Dad Joke and now he knows they make me snort laugh! Today's:

ManChild: Hey Mom, I have a rumor about butter.

Me: Oh yeah, what is it?

ManChild: Nahhh, I don't want to spread it.

😂 😂 😂