In which we decorate the pets in holiday finery again!

Horses first:

lytha at the Horse-Crazy American blog always insists that horses have dignity.

At Haiku Farm, nobody has dignity on costume days.

Fiddle looks dignified, until we add that last critical accessory: antlers!Hana looks cute, no matter what.Dignity?

We don't need any of that stuff around here...because we have GOATS!

Dude! Your outfit! it looks so......festive?

It's not easy to get decent photos when all that cuteness is wiggling around.

Speaking of cuteness, here's more:

This is the end of the post.

You want more festivity, you gotta make it yourself.

In which it's winter, but Fiddle and I still have fun out on the trails

Oh, the weather outside is frightful...

Intermittantly frightful, anyhow. Buckets of rain, huge winds, and temps just shy of freezing.

And then, sometimes, we get a few hours of dry skies (not clear skies, mind you...but sometimes the clouds don't drip too much), and that's good enough!
I used to ride alone mostly, but lately we've been meeting up with other folks. It's such good practice for Fiddle to ride with other horses. She's easy to ride solo, but in the past she's been a real handful when we're with somebody else. Some of my friends are willing to help teach her better behavior in groups--and the practice really helps.
Katie and Fire are great company. We talk about books, horses, cooking, and horses and horses and horses. It's so good to talk about horses with other horse people.
We trade off leading and following, but it's a lot easier to take photos from the back. I have a lot of pictures of other horses' backsides.While we were out on the trail, we met up with some other endurance riders. Rhonda and Marilyn were out enjoying the trails with Marilyn's dog Zippy. (I had to keep Fiddle on a very tight rein so she wouldn't try to stomp Zippy, who is a darling dog but a little ditsy). We stopped to chat, so it was a good chance for me to snap a few picturesand even pose for a photo with Fiddle.

When we ride with Patty and Shade, we like to practice leap-frogging. Fiddle likes to be at the back of a group or out in the front. She needs practice passing other horses politely, and politely letting them pass her.

Shade needs practice letting his companions go away from him. Patty says the marble pops out of the hole in his brain pretty easily. Fiddle likes to jet away from other horses for a mile or so, and then she wants to stand at the side of the road and wait for them to catch up again.Shade can't believe that he isn't the fastest horse. He gets so happy when he is back in the lead again. Fiddle isn't sure how she feels about Shade. Her ears change quickly back-and-forth from "nice"
to "naughty".
(That is such a wicked face.)The trails are mushy and slick. We travel carefully. It's so pretty.

We take a photo break.

Apparently, I was still grinning like this when I showed up at work later in the day. Who could blame me?