Ann's Animals

My Aunt Edith's daughter, Ann, has a soft spot for animals. She has miniture horses (one dwarf miniture), chickens, geese, ducks, cats, dogs, and a pygmy goat. Our dear friend Festus, the full sized horse, passed away this past year. He was missed. The miniture donkeys have a new home.

For several summers now we've stopped in for a visit and Ann has very patiently helped the kids get to know her pets.

As we drove up the drive we saw good old Buckey. He's a dwarf miniture horse. He's looking GOOD. Last year he was carrying around too much extra weight. The vet suggest he go on a diet. It worked because he's look rather slim now!

Buckey is an outsider. The other miniture horses don't accept him as part of the herd. His fellow dwarf miniature passed away a couple of years ago. I guess they have special health issues and don't have a very long life span. We did our best to make him feel special.






Here's the rest of the herd. I'm not posting many photos of them because I don't want to give them the satisfaction.





Next we have the uncles. Someone tried to abandon three kittens. Ann would have none of that! She took them in and since they're all boys she named them after her uncles. Tomcatting is not tolerated at Annn's so they've all been fixed and are doing quite well now. As evidenced by the following photos you can see the kittens were a BIG HIT!








Then we have Camelot. Boy, has he grown since last time we saw him. He was about the size of the Uncles last year. Everyone was excited to see him. He was excited to see everyone. He could barely contain his enthusiasm. This quickly scared all the little kids since his displays of excitement involved head butting anyone who was about his size.





Thanks to the quick hands of Dad, Noelle was saved from a burst of enthusiasm from Camelot.




Cinder, the dog, is the Alpha in this strange friendship. He puts Camelot in his place when he gets to uppity.


Here's Cinder getting a good belly rub from my youngest. I think she may have been considering sneaking him home with us.



Ann has graciously made the offer for free roosters. If anyone is interested you're welcome to come and get them.


The kids got to gather eggs. It was a thrilling experience made more so by the "flighty" nature of the hens. However, the kids were brave and dodged feathers and fowls and found eggs aplenty!

Reagan harbors a secret desire to hatch an egg. Since I found an egg in her preschool backpack I've had to keep an especially close eye on her. Here she is craddling an egg and telling Ann how she would really like to try to hatch this egg. I think Ann got a little giggle out of this.


After rides in the gator...



admiring Maile...



And a plea to go home....


We gathered together for one final photo and bid Ann farewell until next year.