I am nearly done editing my notes from the clinic I audited with Alexandra Kurland two weeks ago. It’s taken awhile because there was lots of good information I wanted to include! I plan to publish the first post of notes tomorrow (Tuesday) and the second and third parts later in the week. So stay tuned!
We’ve had a lot of adoptions recently at the rescue, which has been great. I posted last week about our young quarter pony Blossom finding a great home.
Yesterday evening the rescue delivered Ella, a young donkey, to her new home. Ella was adopted by a woman named Jane, who’s been a long time friend of the rescue. I know that we’ll get lots of updates and photos from Jane. Ella came to the rescue about a year ago. She was a stray who was picked up by the county and probably wasn’t even a year old. She was completely terrified of people and didn’t want to be touched or petted.
We spent a lot of time working with Ella over the past year. One of our high school volunteers, Meghan, in particular spent a ton of time helping Ella learn that people are fun to be around and teaching her about halters, leading, picking up her feet, and trailer loading.
After Ella learned that humans were fun, it was hard to keep her away from you! She always wanted to be the life of the party and would come trotting up in the pasture, begging to get to hang out with us. This is one of my favorite videos of Ella, from one day last February when she had a great time playing with my friend Liz’s dog Ransom.
Ella got to meet a pig for the first time yesterday! She’ll also have several goats to play with and keep her company. As well, Ella will have a young little donkey named Muffin to hang out with. Donkeys love having other donkeys as friends. Many people aren’t aware of this. Some donkeys do okay with horses, but many miss having another donkey around. There have been times when we have only had one donkey at the rescue and the donkey would spend lots of time braying and talking to the other donkeys down the street.
The rescue I work is going through some big changes right now. The rescue currently needs to find foster homes for about half a dozen horses, as well as two donkeys. Some of these only need very short term foster homes, while some will need foster homes for a longer period of time. If you have friends in Texas, could you please check out this album on facebook and share it with your friends? The horses and I would really appreciate it. 🙂