Fail, fail fail

Ever have one of those days where everything you touch goes wrong?  I had one of those days.  Thankfully enough it happened at the end of the day so the entire day wasn't trashed but it made for a pretty bad night.  It started out by my getting out of work fairly close to on time and deciding to start dinner before bringing the horses in for the night.  As I stood at the kitchen sink washing my hands I gaze outside to see the horses standing at the gate staring at me, waiting for me to bring them in.  Except I don't see them standing at the gate staring back at me.  I see them eating grass outside of the pasture.  Next to the house.  Everyone is out!!!  All 4 of them!  It is dark, dark too, not dusk but full on night time with no moon shining through.  I casually walked outside and said Hi to the App and walked quickly to the barn and started to make noise in the feed room.  Of course no one is interested in grain, they are OUTSIDE and have GRASS.  I grabbed a bucket with grain and a spare lead rope (Thank goodness I love having extras of everything!) and walked up to the App.

The App is the herd leader.  The App controls where everyone goes and at which speed.  If he decides to run around then everyone else will too just because you do what the App suggests.  I had a pit in my stomach as I walked up to the App but he let me put the lead rope over his neck like it was no big deal.  Thank goodness he didn't decide to take that moment to show Appytude and move away from me.  In my mind I pictured him knowing he was outside and knowing he wasn't supposed to be outside and choosing that moment to flee for more freedom with his tail waiving in the night as he faded from sight.  Yes, I was shaking as I walked him back to his stall.

I successfully and easily grabbed the TWH and put him away, leaving me with the pony and the donkey.  The TWH is such a good horse.  I went for the pony next and he stuck his head in the bucket for a nanosecond bite before taking his head out and then started to run away.  That is one of his tricks, one I really dislike.  About a half second later he stopped though, he realized I had sweet feed in that bucket!  I didn't have stupid boring carrots or plain pellets, I was offering sweet feed!  He decided if sweet feed was the offer then he was happy to be caught and went happily into his stall.  I went back out to grab the last escapee and the donkey wasn't there.

I looked around and barely saw a swish of her tail as she went around the house to head to the road.  Dang donkey, what is your problem?  You are dark grey and it is dark out.  I can only see you because I have the outside lights on, do NOT run away from me.  I ran around some things to cut her off and offered her the grain.  She, unfortunately, was not nearly as impressed as the pony and turned around and headed back to where she had been but this time had her ears on the treeline.  She was enjoying this freedom.  I was again able to cut her off and she stopped and stared at me for a moment before deciding to make a run for it between me and the fenceline.  I did the only thing I could think of, I jumped at/on the donkey and hung off of her neck until she gave up.  Thankfully it only took about 6-7 steps to do so but she gave a small rear and a little buck in protest.  I then ordered her to her stall and told her she was a bad donkey.

For good or bad it looks like they pulled on the gate and since the gate post isn't driven far into the ground due to rocks, it was loose and I think it wiggled just enough to be loose enough to let go of the gate.  Needless to say I dug the pole up, put some sand in there too to fill gaps and refilled the hole.  I also now have a pin that goes in a hole in the gate's lock.  It is reserved for padlocks but I am using a lynch pin.

After that endeavor I didn't think much more would go wrong, right?  What had I done to Karma to deserve more?  Well I don't know the answer to the last question however I had to dump the 10 cu ft wheelbarrow filled with pasture poo and then dump the poo box into the dumpster.  The wheelbarrow didn't make it all the way into the poo box before dumping it's contents everywhere resulting in my cleaning poo off the ground again.  Then I forgot SO had placed the back blade on the tractor so when I pulled the tractor out of the barn to empty the poo box, the back blade drug the ground making a mess of all of the mats we store the tractors on, making a mess of the grass and making a mess of everything.  What was supposed to be a 30 min chore night (bring in, feed and dump poo) ended up being almost 1.5 hours as I tried to fix the tractor damage so SO didn't see my dumb moment.  Is it bedtime yet?