However, when the nights are cold, we do let the two dogs into the basement. They happily curl up on their respective blankets and, typically, are quiet until morning. Last night, however, I was awakened at 2:20am by Jack whining at the basement stairs.
Jack is our black lab/German shepherd/hound mix.
I tried to ignore him for a while, hoping he'd go back to sleep but he would have none of it. I groped around on the bedstand for my glasses but couldn't find them so I shuffled down the stairs, half blind, in my fuzzy socks. After I let Jack and Fynn out of the basement I stood on the front porch for a minute enjoying the cool air and the (blurry) moonlit view.
That's when I heard a rhythmic, wooden, thumping, bumping sound coming from the barn. I slipped my feet into Dear Son's crusty barn shoes and scuffed my way down the sidewalk to the barnyard. The goats did not seem too surprised to see me. They rushed the gate hoping for an early morning treat. The barn cat came streaking out of the barn and happily wound her way through my legs as I looked for the source of the sound.
Ah, there. Patchy Pony's nose was poking over the door - a doorway that he should not have been able to reach. He's so short that he can't look over a gate unless he points his nose up in the air and looks sideways, with one eye, over the top. I could see him ogling me over the barn door.
The ponies go into small paddock for the night for two reasons; one, to preserve some of the grass in the pasture and, two, because they don't need to eat 24/7. They both stay fat on grass and ponies can actually get sick from eating too much. If we leave them out overnight they will literally eat all night long. So the grass gets a break and the boys get to cool their heels for the night.
The only problem was, the night before, Rio had broken the inside door of their run-in stall. This was the door the kids and I had built last summer. I was so proud of the Dutch door we made all by ourselves that I took a picture . . .
The bad, little Patchy Pony cornered Rio in the corner of the run-in stall and kicked him. (Rio is new to the herd and Patchy is still trying to establish his dominance.) Poor Rio, frantic to escape, hit the stall door so hard that it cracked right down the middle. It was late in the evening so DH and I just closed the top part of the Dutch door and hoped it would hold them in for the night. It did but we did not get around to fixing the door Sunday afternoon.
Sunday evening the children brought the ponies up from the field. I assumed they would shut the top part of the stall door. Never assume. They didn't and now Patchy had broken the door completely down the middle. Two boards were laying on the ground. He had walked over them to let himself into the barn. Thankfully he hadn't done much damage - just pulled all the empty feed sacks out and tossed them all around. But now he was standing, stuck, in the barn aisle.
I picked up the broken pieces of board and gently tapped him on his chest to command him to back up. This was a difficult thing for him to comprehend because he had a concrete step up into the stall he had to navigate while moving backwards. Meanwhile the rooster had been roused from sleep because the barn lights were on. He began crowing. And crowing. And crowing.
Don't think it's like the coffee commercials where the rooster crows - off in the distance - and the woman sits on the edge of the bed smiling and stretching. It's not like that.
That ding-dang bird starts bawling his head off somewhere around 4:30am most mornings. He crows and crows and crows. For my part, I lay in bed dolefully counting how many minutes of sleep I've now missed and I daydream about throttling him with my bare hands. We have two roosters right now and two is one too many. They announce their rooster-ness by crowing; starting at 4:30am but they pretty much crow at any time all day long. It's like dueling roosters around here.
The reverb in the barn was deafening. He wouldn't shut up. I grabbed the nearest thing I could find, a plastic pitchfork, and pitched it at the bird. He squawked in surprise and flapped to the other side of the barn, clucking indignantly.
The pony backed beautifully up the step and back into the stall. I tried to sort of prop up the broken boards and close the top part of the door. The pony shoved back from his side of the door, scattered the pieces again and pushed his nose through the opening. I put everything back in place and looked around for something heavy to hold them there. There wasn't much to chose from. Finally I settled on using a five gallon bucket that was filled with molasses. (We use it to top-dress our dairy cow's food.)
I nearly took out the barn cat with the bucket as I waddled back to the stall with the heavy bucket. I put it down and hoped the pony wasn't strong enough to push the bucket over; what a mess that would be -five gallons of molasses spilled on the barn floor!
It seemed as though the bucket was holding so I fed the barn cat, petted the goats one last time and headed back to the house. The dogs came back, excited from their night run, and settled quickly in the basement.
As I crawled back in to bed I was surprised to see the whole escapade had taken only 25 minutes. It seemed longer. I was thankful when DH got up this morning and did chores while I slept in. By the time I made my way out to the barn, everything was done. The bucket was sitting off to the side with just a little molasses dripped down the sides. Phew! I guess fixing a stall door is on the list of things to do today!
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