Best Friends - Day 6 - Horse Haven & Amra at the Clubhouse - 9/16/08
This would be our last day at Best Friends. For a change of pace (for me anyway), we headed on over to Horse Haven after returning Pickles back to the Lodges. We watched a video while Brittney the pig hung out inside with us. She is one big, old pig! We spent a few minutes mucking then headed to the feed truck. We met Nina, one of the staff there, who is a real stitch! According to her, her family were the original owners of the property Best Friends sits on. The lease was sold out from under them. But she holds no grudges. She's happy to be able to work on the property and seems happy with whats been done with it. Libby also came with us. She's a volunteer who was on her third week of a three week volunteer stint. We went around to all the horses, goats, sheep, and donkeys and fed them. Keri and I rode in the back of the truck. Nina drove and Libby shared the cab of the truck with Nina and her two dogs, one of which rode on the dashboard. We were lucky to be able to cross the canyon to feed some horses in a pasture on the other side. It was a steep, cliff road and a bit scary to be riding in the back of the truck. After feeding those horses, Nina drove us up to an underground lake. It was just stunning! Afterwards, we drove back and did dishes (yeah, a bit anti-climactic). Then I groomed Bryce, a beautiful, black horse. We saw Riley, the horse with the prosthetic leg. He seems to be doing well and getting around just fine. Next, we watched a vet do a dental on a horse. This was most interesting! And quite a feat! It took 3 people to get the horse into place and keep him there. Working with the horses was probably the most fun I had. I will definitely work with them again.
We stopped by the gift shop for some last minute shopping, then went to lunch. Then we headed to HQ for the last time. We signed up for Amra at the Clubhouse. When we got there, Andrea (who I had worked with twice already) was the staff there, and Margaret who had been volunteering at the Garden (and we had met when we were volunteering there). We also met Carin who was on her 2 week evaluation as a staff. She's moving up from Reno to work at BF. Chakita appeared to not be feeling well. He was in a crate sleeping all afternoon. Hopefully, he was checked out and is feeling better. China was inside with a cone on her head because she had stitches in her ear. Pinky Bear was moved back to the Lodges. We changed the water in the water buckets and pools. Andrea had me write something up about Romo mouthing me the other day when I was in his pen. Romo has a habit of humping, which Andrea warned me about. He was fine at first (as I was changing his water), but then he latched on to me and would not let go. When I was trying to get him off me, he mouth me (not biting, but he did put his mouth on me). And apparently he did something similar to Carin. So, he may turn into a staff only dog. Poor Romo. I felt bad because after we took care of the water buckets we got to socialize with the dogs and he looked so sad that no one came in to play with him. I spent a lot of time with Scratch. He seemed so happy to see me and to have company. He's such a love! I spent some time with Debo, yet another very sweet pitbull. Then I hung out with Shocky, a sweet, high energy, young pitbull. Then Carin took Lexie out into the exercise pen so she could run around. She's another high energy, young pitbull (who I took to Angel's Landing the other day). She got to run around, play fetch, and de-stuff a toy. Then Scratch came out to run around and share some lovin'. Then Debo, who spent all of his time out lizard hunting. He was pretty determined to find and catch a lizard.
We said goodbye, which was very difficult to do, and headed to the Welcome Center so Keri could return the video camera she was using. We ate Dinner at the Rewind Cafe with Kay and her husband. Then headed back to the room to pack.