Merry Christmas

Our annual horse torturing picture day happened on Sunday. The horses behaved beautifully and enjoyed the extra attention.

Merry Christmas from the Bionic Cowgirl, Washoe, Alloy, and Reba!

Surprise Horse Cookies

This is GunDiva. The daughter.

Two weekends ago was our annual Baking Weekend at the lodge. It's always a big to-do, and we always crank out a lot of cookies, but we've never made cookies for the horses before. The Friday of Baking Weekend, I had to drop Jay off at the airport on my way up to the lodge, and as I was driving, I drove right past the barn where my friend boards her horse. I looked at the facility and immediately thought, "we should make some horse cookies." Now, why I thought about it when driving by my friend's horse's barn and never while looking out the window at our own horses, I'll never know, but the idea took root.

I was running ahead of schedule, and hungry, so when I stopped to grab a bite to eat, I looked up horse cookie recipes that wouldn't require me to go to the store to buy more ingredients. There were a lot of yummy sounding ones, but the one I landed on was this one:

This seemed easy enough, and we had all of the ingredients, so up to the lodge I went with my additional project in mind.

Luckily, I got up there before everyone else, so Mom and I had undisturbed mother/daughter time to whip out these treats for the horses. They came together very easily and quickly. 

I quickly wrote down the recipe on a white board so we didn't have to keep going back and forth to the video. In the video, she said to bake them at 315*F, which Mom and I decided had to be a mistake, so we baked ours at 350*F. Very quickly, we smelled burning molasses, and turned the oven down. If you chose to make them, follow the video's directions.

We dug through our cookie cutters and found a cowboy boot, cowboy hat, and a horse to use. Not that the horses care about the shapes of their cookies, but they made us smile. We chose to leave them unfrosted, as none of our horses need the extra sugar, and we didn't want to bother with the mess.

I did taste one, just because, and it's not horrible to my human pallet, but not great. The horses, however, greatly disagree and think they're about the best cookies on the planet. Washoe and Alloy got the first taste of the cookies after they loaded into their horse uber, but the rest had to wait until they'd finished with their Christmas pictures yesterday.

This is a simple and easy recipe to make, and the horses give them four hooves up.

Time to Visit the Cousins

This is GunDiva. The daughter.

(500 Allenspark Lodge points if you know where that intro's from. (1000 Once Upon A Miracle points if you know where the points came from.))

For several years now, the "Allenspark Cousins" have been wintering with the "Wild Ones" down at our place. While the Bionic Cowgirl and I both prefer to turn the horses out on winter pasture where they can just be wild, we are no longer are able to send them away for winter camp, so instead they move down to our place until after the last snowstorm in May.

Last weekend was our annual Baking Weekend, which coincided with horse moving day. Jessica, who has trained all of the horses, with the exception of Washoe, came up to move them from the lodge down to my place.

Alloy *hates* Mom's trailer. Hates it. Last year, we spent two days trying to get him to load to go down the hill before calling Jessica to come get him. He loaded like a champ into her trailer, of course. 

Jerk.

Anyway ...

Jessica was kind enough to come up and play horse uber again.

Patiently awaiting their uber

Mom spent some time grooming and loving on them while they waited. The pictures make it look a lot colder out than it actually was. She was all bundled up for the wind, not so much the cold.

Once the uber arrived, she lead them across the street to their ride down.

They really are good horses,
even if they both make me
crazy once in a while.

Big Al had minor opinions about getting on the trailer, but it took only a few times of in and out for him to stay in. Mom and Jessica found out last time she hauled Al, that he prefers to ride backward, so once he got on the trailer and stayed, she backed him the rest of the way in and closed the gate. Easy peasy.

In ...

... in ...

... out ...

Backing into his spot

Success!

Washoe loads on voice command, so getting him into the big, spacious trailer took no more than a "load up" from Mom, then they were on their way.

I headed into the lodge, only to find that my girls had been taking a break to watch the show.

Front row seats

Luckily, there wasn't much of a show this time and we were able to get back to our baking.