Pokie is here!

Such exciting times!!! Cody and I have a new addition to our horse family! Allow me to introduce Pokie! That's right- I named her after my childhood imaginary friend. I know most kids have people as their imaginary friends but not me. I wouldn't go anywhere without my faithful friend Pokie. Unfortunately she would occasionally talk me into mischief and I always seemed to get blamed for it. Go figure! Well finally I can have an actual real live animal to blame when things go wrong. Pokie was born yesterday and once again- I missed it. :( Seems to be my lot in life. Dumb horses always go into labor durning the night. Well Cody had to get up at 4 am to drive to Boise for a seminar and he came running back in to wake me and say that we had a new foal in the pasture. I jumped out of bed and found her lying on the ground shivering. It is no small thing to go from a warm, wet, safe place to a cold, hard ground. She was shaking so bad I gathered towels and blankets to warm her and spent about 30 minutes lying next to her so she'd get warm. Poor thing. She was also born with a contition called flexor tendon laxidy. Apparently when a foal doesn't have enough room in the mom to grow completly their tendons in the back legs sometimes get messed up. When I first saw her stand up it looked like she had broken her back foot. Instead of steping on her hoof a she was walking on her fetlock. Her whole leg looked like a wet noodle. Well Cody and I were freaking out that she would have to be put down so we called the vet and did some research online and they all said that it would correct itself in a week or so. And sure enough just 2 days later she is doing much better and walking almost normal. I have a picture on my other camera of the night she was born and looked all weird but i can't find the cord to put the picture up. So that will have to come later.
Well regardless we had quite the scare. What was really neat about Pokie and Coco is that they look identical except for the white on their legs. Coco only has one white sock and Pokie has 3. I can't wait to train them on a wagon or sleigh. They are going to be the best matched team out there! The picture at the bottom of both of the horses has Coco in the front and Pokie in the back. Hard to tell them apart except for their size. I wish everyone could come and see them. I was laying out with them today getting a tan and Pokie keep sprinting up and down the length of the fence just kicking and running and jumping having so much fun. Plus her leg is still a little weird so when she started going to fast she'd fall over and nearly scare her mom to death. Such a funny horse!

Well the other picture of me is with the brand new pigmy goat babies at bear world. They are just to die for and I wish I could take them home. Guess I'll just have to be happy with my baby horses. In other news Laura (my sisiter) put her mission papers in on Tue and we now begin the 2-4 week wait to see where she'll go. So exciting!!!

One year of Marriage!

Well it's the one year mark since that memorable wedding day in Logan! And I'm happy to say that we made it through without any flu symptoms or Kidney Stones. I know, such an accomplishment! We taught our lesson at church and made a delicious pork and rice dinner. Below is the cake I put together to honor the occasion and might I say it turned out delicious. Well baby horse update- the second foal still hasn't been born yet so we are on pins and needles for something to happen. The mare is so huge that we are afraid it will get to the point that the baby will just decided it's a lot cozier in there and never come out. Dumb horses. Speaking of crazy horses- Cody and I are trying to teach our baby horse Coco to be led with a rope. You'd think you could just pull and she'd go but you've never seen such a freak out as Coco. When we pull on the rope she goes all crazy and usually ends up on the ground. So the best way we've figured out is to lead her mom around and also lead Coco so she gets used to following but has the added incentive of following mom. So far so good. We might actually make a horse out of her some day. She's been doing the cutest thing of mimicking her mom. When mom eats she pushes the food around, rubbing her nose in it and chewing to make it look like she's eating too. And when mom goes to get a drink of water she sticks her nose in and swirls the water around. She want's so bad to be a grown up. I'm sure that will happen all too soon!

Ok- I know that this isn't a real kid or anything but hey, I don't have a kid so everyone gets to see pictures of our horse. So this is Coco again because the other foal hasn't been born yet. I'm afraid the mare is going to pop she is so huge. Anyway- Coco is doing great and we are working hard to get her used to people (hence the almost forced cuddling we have to put her through). Her little tail and mane are showing signs of being curly, true to her Percheron father, and also has a cute little whinny whenever we show up. In the picture below she even has her legs crossed. Such a Lady! In other news Cody and I have our one year aniversary coming up this Sunday. One whole year! Yeah! And I have this Sunday off! Sweet! Maybe we should all get the flu again in honor of what happened this time last year. I've been watching Cody for signs of kidney stones and so far so good.

Coco Bean!

A BABY HORSE!!! Welcome to the world little Coco Brower! She was born last night around midnight and we missed it by maybe 10 minutes. I went out to feed them yesterday and noticed that Beans milk had come in so I ran to get Cody and we went out every hour to see if anything would happen. She was acting kind of funny but all the internet sources said that it could still be days till the foal came in so we tried not to over react and hound her. Well around midnight we went to see her right before bed just to make sure nothing was going on. We rounded the barn and pointed our flash light in and saw a little brown baby horse in the back. It was this magical, crazy moment when Cody and I both looked at eachother and said "there is a baby horse in the barn!" Turns out that Bean had it covered and gave birth without any assistance. I moved the placenta and sack off the ground and moved it and then we sat there for a few hours rubbing her and drying her off. It was so much fun seeing this darling little baby horse that was so soft and velvet and sleepy from exhaustion. Here are some pictures of her. The name Coco came beacuse her mom is white and named Bean so we thought it fitting that a little brown baby of Bean be named Coco Bean. I feel like cody and I have had our first baby the way we are worrying and fusing over her. Our other horse should go any day so I'll keep everyone updated.

Turkey Attack!

It's true that this is the most random collection of pictures a blog has seen yet but I had them kicking around on my camera and thought I'd finally put them on. The first picture of a turkey is in reference to an encounter I had a couple of weeks ago that reoccurred yesterday and reminded me of it. So one of my main jobs at Bear World is to be in charge of opening and closing the gate to the bear exhibit for cars. I'm on the herbivore side of the fence for obvious safety reasons (or so I thought). There is a flock of turkeys that hang around the park and I always thought they looked pretty neat. Well a couple of weeks ago a flock of wild female turkeys flew into the park and left after a couple of days (much to the dismay of the male turkeys). Unfortunately I was in the victim of that disappointment and anger . So while I was going to open the gate for an incoming car out of no where come this charging male turkey. I figure birds are dumb and harmless so I try to shoo it away, finding out that aggression is met with aggression when dealing with turkeys. He turns on me and starts pecking me and throwing his surprisingly heavy body against me. All the while the people in the car are watching this fiasco, unable to help me in any way. Now I'm an animal lover but you better believe that I was kicking that stupid turkey as hard as I could to get him away but nothing was working. Finally I just slowly started backing away, making no sudden aggressive moves and when the turkey was finally convinced that his authority would go unchallenged again he moved off and left me alone. When I went up to the car to get the gate for them they assured me that they would keep the rules and never get out of their car. Small wonder!



Anyway, the picture of my niece, Noelle, is from when I was helping Regan and Pete move and me and Noelle played hide and go seek in the kitchen. Such a cute girl!
The other picture is just so Idaho I couldn't help posting it. When Cody and I first moved into this new house we had to do a lot of work on the field we keep the horses on. It was choked with dead grass that had to be gathered and burned. Starting a fire on your own property in California would be big trouble but in Idaho it's an everyday thing. So this is a picture of my huge field pile burning. Oh Idaho! Don't you just love it? I'll try to put a couple of more pictures of my pregnant horses on here. They are getting so FAT!

Feeding Time

Work Work and more Work

So here are some more pictures of where I work at. This last week sure was a busy one! Some of the highlights were of course working with the baby bear cubs (and having several new bite marks as a result), tranquilizing a moose, releasing 2 new wolves into the park and making sure they didn't attack anything and last but not least training the bear cubs on electric fences. What a week! Below are some pictures of the grizzlies (Bridger and Bridget), bear cubs and me working on the moose. Don't worry- we were just trimming his hooves. Even moose need a manicure every once and awhile.
I'm also putting in a video of the bear cubs at feeding time. They are usually not this aggressive but we were an hour late getting to them and that's where all the aggression gets let out. They are sleepy and cuddly again once their bellies are full. So other than being dead beat tired I had a lot of fun this weekend. And I got to help plan and run my sister-in-law's baby shower. Congrats Jyl!!! And a happy mothers day to my wonderful mom. What would I do without you!?! Oh yeah- and my birthday happened. 25... that's old! My mom got me a sewing machine and Cody got me clearplay (a special editing dvd player that takes out the bad words in movies) and Leah got me something too but you can call and ask me what that is :)
Love you all and happy mothers day!