Upload update

[uploader's note: the last two Evergreen Stables videos are now up in the post "This Shall Make Thou Bored-eth." Without looking, I think it is two posts before this one. Enjoy! - The Uploader]

A bad idea

So we are sitting in the living room watching tv when Daddy gets up and lights a match. I figure that he's going to make coffee or tea so I go to offer to help. Suddenly, he pulls his arm back and throws the match four feet away to the far side of the kitchen floor. I watch the match sizzle out confused. The conversation that follows went something like this:
"What
"Why'd ya do that?"
"I smelled something funny and wanted to make sure it wasn't gas (cooking gas) that would fill up the house and kill us in our sleep."
"So you check by, if it was gas, blowing up the kitchen?"
"Admittedly it wasn't the best idea ever."
"Uh huh"
This is completely non-India related but this gives an idea of how being here messes up both our heads. Also, it's just really funny.

[uploader's note: two more videos should be up in the two posts below. They took me 90 minutes to upload, so please don't ask the Boo for more video, more often]

This shalt make thou bored-eth

That is unless you absolutely ADORE horses, chickens or dogs. Or frogs. Mostly horses though.

This shows how loose the horses and humans are around each other. That's Kayla by the way.




But then again the humans do ask the horses to do difficult things. Here's Kayla being trained to eventually have all four legs on a tiny block.




Here is an explanation from Bettina about a little of how the stable works:



And finally a random frog. I caught this guy on the stable wall:

Evergreen Farm, continued

The Horses:

This video focuses mainly on Kayla. At three years old she is the youngest equine on the farm. Also at about twenty seconds I focus on two horses scratching each other's butt. Just to let you know that is a sign of friendship.




This is Moksha and Crystal Air (Kris for short). Kris, Moksha's mother, is in the front. They are grooming each other in companionship. You can tell them apart because Kris is slightly bigger and has an upside-down crescent on her forhead while Moksha has no face markings.




This is Opaline, the horse I work with. One of the instructors has a toddler son who calls her Opalet. In this video she is having her hooves clipped. The dog is a friendly doberman named Sultan.

HORSIESSSSS!!!

So, I've started taking natural horsemanship lessons at evergreen stable. I will enjoy describing conditions but while I search my head for the right words, I'll first show you the equine residents.

The Ponies



This is Honey. She is the oldest. She is sometimes nippy on the ground but you can tell she is clever and sweet when you get to know her.




Nicky is four. As Honey's daughter she is sometimes temper-mental, but still sweet.




This is Geruda, Rudy for short. He is the only male in the stables, and I think Nicky's father. He is also the only pinto.

Animals galore!

Finally after weeks I've seen an elephant! The Vinayagar (Ganesh) temple sometimes has an elephant( ya know 'cause Ganesh is elephant-headed) waiting in front of the door, just standing there being fed and gawked at. Daddy had seen the elephant earlier that week and so we decided to go check. When we get there we see everybody pushing and shoving themselves through the motorcycle barricades, but of course this is typical Indian behavior, nothing special. But when we get through the barricades, there she is, a 10 ft high elephant. She's standing on a wooden platform, her face is decorated with blue, white, red, purple and yellow face chalk. Around her feet silver anklets hang, jingling as she moves, and around her neck she wears a gold chain, attached to which is a plaque carrying her name, Lakshmi. Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth.



Also, I've now seen two wild, male peacock. The first was in a field. He was displaying. For those of you who have seen peacocks at zoos, wild peacocks are much, MUCH bigger. He was four feet tall, and he had a FIVE FOOT LONG TAIL! Also, peacocks can jump much higher than you would expect them to be able to. He jumped to the top of a meter high fence! He didn't even flap his wings, he just jumped. The second one was on the side of the road, scratching at the ground. It was cool to watch him eat. This one was smaller though, maybe 2 and a half feet. He had about a 4 ft tail.