The current equine treat is underripe pears. Miss D eats them the way a horse eats treats - she slurps up the first chunk, crunches it into slurry, and is already looking for the next chunk. When she’s got her share she chomps up her mouthful into slobbery foam and moves on to some grain food. She loves to *eat food.*
But the donkey! Samwise is a complete gourmet. He spends several minutes sucking on the chunks, slowly chewing them, really making them last. He was slurping his pear chunks while I was gently scritching his shoulders when I decided to video him. The flash came on, but it didn’t stop his enjoyment. Samwise loves to *taste* food even more than he loves to eat it. And he loves to be touched - scratched, scritched, massaged. Miss D, by contrast, likes to have her itchy spots thoroughly scratched, and then she’s done with being touched. He’s such a little hedonist. I love him so much.
#horses #donkey #equines

The #equines staged a full intervention this evening. They clearly wanted to know why I was spending so much time sitting in the garden with the #chickens when I could be providing them with any number of human services!

Well, a week after I let the #chickens into one of the #cucumber beds, and the plants seem to have been merely inconvenienced. I dug two huge sneakers out of the tossed-around mulch, plus a bunch of poorly pollinated young cukes. These can go to the #equines as snacks.