Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Update from a wild weekend-- By Rachel

Life on the farm has been busy lately. In particular this last weekend was very full. We had several community outreach events overlapping on Saturday and Sunday, and managed to pull them all off!

First of all, the last weekend of every month holds Lynn Willingham's marvelous used book sale. If you have never been, this amazing lady collects donated books and then sells them out of her barn for the benefit of local animal charities. I had never been before, and I can honestly say I was really impressed by the operation! Lynn offered us a great opportunity to set up a table and speak to people about the work we do, so on Saturday Lydia and I split a shift. Moose and Izzy came as out dog ambassodors, and were quite a hit. On Sunday, I came again with Jill and Max. Max especially was a rock star. All the ladies who were assisting Lynn at the book sale were so kind to us-- one of them brought a dog bed out of her truck so that he wouldn't have to sit on the ground, and the other offered her coat to him so he could snuggle and stay warm. The best part of the day for the dogs was getting to ride in Lynn's golf cart around the property. It was like puppy Disney Land.

On Saturday we also had a booth at the Loomis Earth Day Festival. Atlas, the Miniature Horse had his first public appearance. He handled it all in amazing stride. Nothing bothered him including: trains passing 50 feet away, fire trucks, a huge wolf in a cage, 4 zillion kids swarming around to pet him, audio equipment, musical instruments three times his height, balloons, umbrellas, pop up tents, baby strollers, flapping bags and booth favors, other horses, and five gagillion dogs. He was quite the spokes pony, and I can't wait for another opportunity to bring him out to meet his adoring public.

While all this was going on, Dr. Tom Wilson, our director of education was running a class back at home base. I would comment more on this, but only observed for several second at a time when I stopped to zip back and forth in the house for supplies.

Thank goodness the week has come and we can all get some well deserved downtime (maybe).

Thursday, April 1, 2010

We Need Your Votes!

We need to land in the Top Ten Ideas in the $50,000 category!