horses n stuff

Dusty doesn't miss much. This is a photo from yesterday afternoon, taken through the kitchen window. It was several hours before horsey dinnertime, I was in the kitchen making oatmeal fudge bars (which turned out fabulous, by the way, maybe I'll post a recipe?) and, um, he was watching me. I'm sure of it. Yeesh.

He did a little early trick or treating last night. I went out at 8 this morning to feed and was quite surprised to see him not in the corral where he's supposed to be, but rather over by one of the chicken coops with the lid off the feed bin, stuffing his face. He turned and looked at me, "hi!" and then went back to eating. Great. I was hoping this would have been his only raid but from the looks of things he downed several flakes of grass hay (I have no idea how many, because what had been 3/4 of a bale was just a giant trampled pile), about half a flake of alfalfa, who knows how many pounds of chicken food, some quantity of mulberry leaves, and about 6 pounds of grain.

That'll freak a horse owner out.

I am not sure how he got out. It is entirely possible I didn't latch the gate properly. It is at least equally (if not more) possible that he figured out how to open it. I have seen him messing with it.

I was pretty paranoid all day hoping he wouldn't get sick, but he's fine, and everything's passing right on through, if you catch my drift...

In other news, Shylah finally got shoes today. Mission accomplished. JC, now we HAVE TO go riding! :-)

And today I baked a pumpkin cheesecake. It smells so good in here! It has to chill overnight. I hope it's good... I had to bake it about 40 minutes longer than the recipe called for. I swear. Recipes are sometimes just totally out of whack.