Check out our Santa’s Workshop video!

Yesterday, December 17, the horses created the video. The temperature was a warm zero, whereas today the wind is whipping and minus eight or lower. We’re SOOOO glad that we scheduled the filming for yesterday!

Bill headed to the arena to securely attach the Christmas tree to a pedestal (no explanation needed). Ron and I went to the roundpen to see if we could create a snowman. We chose the roundpen because we could turn the horses loose in there for filming. Yesterday’s snow was powdery, not very good for packing. After a few minutes of having snowball after snowball disintegrate in our hands we filled muck out buckets with snow and packed it in them. Three bucketfuls were the base of the snowman. The middle layer had two buckets and the top had one. You’ll see Ron using a garden watering can to create a bit of ice to help solidify the precariously packed snow. That did the trick. Twenty-four hours later the snowman is still standing!

When we were ready for the first horse to meet the snowman we had a few questions. Would the snowman be knocked over by horse number one resulting in only one horse being videotaped? With a demolished snowman a distinct possibility we considered letting the three horses that are turned out together visit the snowman all at once. Only problem with that is Spring Song does enjoy bossing Kye and Dora. Would her pushiness affect the snowman?

After much discussion we decided to start with Dora, then, if things were going well, we’d add Kye. As for Spring Song, we’d wait and see.

Speaking of Dora, the pony, Ron pointed out that she’s not all that tall and she might have difficulty reaching the edible decorations. He added a delicious line of treats at pony height. Turns out all of the horses loved them.

The horses worked with the snowman first and were encouraged to eat the decorations on it: stud muffins, carrots and horse treats. In the arena the horses took that “eat what you can” attitude to the Christmas tree. When we said we wanted to trim the tree we were thinking of placing stockings on it, not eating chunks of it. In hindsight perhaps we should have started with the “do not eat the tree” and progressed to the “eat what you can” snowman.