Friday morning re-run

I am including an old blog from last year for your morning reading pleasure! I don't have to work today and so I slept late (small pleasure on a beautiful morning)
Time to get in the shower, go feed horses and start on the chores at the barn.

Here is the blog from last year.

Sunny and the new caretakers.

I have a new caretaker at my little farm. A young woman looking for a cheaper rent. I was looking for horse experience and she said she had it. Well, what she had was "summer horse camp" experience, but this isn't rocket science and so what the heck...I gave her a chance. She works hard. However.........she has a daughter....daughter loves horses....like all little girls do and I do not want liability. Rules are made......no children in paddocks........period. Understood and accepted.
Rescue horse Sunny gets "slop" three times a day. "Slop" consists of beet pulp, senior grain, a half scoop of Strategy and his smart paks (chondroiton, glucosamine, yucca and MSM) He also gets hay and soaked hay cubes. He picks the good parts out of the hay.....he was a 2 on a scale of 1 - 10 when he arrived. Very sad case.

I arrived after work,one early evening to check on Sunny...make sure all is going well. I walk out to the paddock, look in his bucket to see if he has eaten everything.

hmm.....

he hasn't exactly eaten everything. I wonder why...?
I pick the bucket up and peer into it .......I see something green......
something green?
HUH?
I reach in and grab a handful of.......mixed vegetables?

I find "mixed vegetables" in his grain bucket.
yes...I said mixed vegetables.........as in corn, lima beans mixed vegetables....
plus a pork chop.

Heavy sigh, small laugh.

I go, post haste to the caretaker and ask why are there mixed vegetables plus a pork chop in Sunny's grain bucket?

Caretaker says she doesn't know.

The small voice of the eight year old daughter pipes up.......

"I thought it would be good for him....vegetables help make you strong.....I saved him some of my dinner".

The angel who sits on my right shoulder tells me to remember how it feels to be an eight year old girl who loves horses. I try to find some words that won't hurt or punish.......

Then I laugh a little because the answer was so honest and pure of heart.....then I gently explain that horses don't eat mixed vegetables or pork chops. I further explain that it is important to only feed him horse food, so he doesn't get sick.

I reiterate to the caretaker that for safety of the horses and the child, NO child is to be in the paddocks. I worry that a small child unattended could get stepped on or bit or kicked and even though my horses are not mean, accidents happen.....blah, blah, blah.

I walk back to the barn and soon I hear a small voice behind me......
"can I help you?"

ummm.......
well......okay, you can turn the water on.

"Okay, she says...."you know I put their names on their buckets today"

No, I didn't know that.

"yep.......with band-aids"

Okay.

Sure enough, all buckets have band-aids on them and felt pen names written on the tops of them.

"Thank you, that will be a big help to me," I said.

I have no kids of my own, sometimes not a lot of patience for other people's kids, but that day brought back memories of myself........
6 years old at a horse play day, taking buckets of water to horses who were tied at trailers, using a stick to clean hooves......never asking permission, never thinking I needed to....there was reason to ask......I was doing what I loved. I was bold enought to ask if I could sit on particular horses. I had cowboy boots. People were nice to me...I don't remember getting chastised or yelled at.....(where was my mother?!) I guess it gave me a lesson for today.

enjoy your day........be safe and sane and watch out for those that aren't.