Story four
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Being a kid is great. We get to play nearly all the time. Every day mum makes sure we have something different to do. We never know what that will be. After breakfast mum lets us rest. I don’t know what time is but when we are ready to go we let mum know by calling out to her. Mum opens the gate to the first corridor as she calls it and out we go. We always follow mum. Sometimes we just cannot wait so we run past her and wait at the next corridor. “Where are we going today mum?” I always ask. That day’s adventure has begun.
We have a choice of six paddocks, one wetlands walk, one adventure playground and many corridors that connect all the paddocks together. All the paddocks have different names.
The first paddock down the corridor is the one that we share with the girls.
The next one is the pond paddock where we do our therapy work with the people.
Walking along the corridor we can go into the vineyard paddock if mum lets us. Mum says that dad and she used to grow grapes there to make wine for people to drink. Is wine nice to drink?
The wetlands walk is next along the corridor. This is really pretty with lots of trees and we can see a long way into other places where the big things called cattle munch on their grass. We don’t go near them, thank goodness.
Mum then lets us run down the hill into the adventure playground. This is fantastic. We have heaps of trees that we hide in and try to catch each other. This is such fun.
After this there is a choice of three paddocks. The first one is called the run. It begins with a flat wide area that opens up into a long, thin run. We use this to see who is the fastest runner of the day. We have a starting line and off we go. When we get to the end we turn around and then race each other back. We usually do this three times before we stop for a drink. After this fun we just graze and pick the leaves off the trees.
The other two paddocks are just so big and are the best for eating but Mum says that if the grass is too high and the grass seeds gets into our ears it will make us very sick. This is why dad has cut the paddocks to make sure that these grass seeds do not hurt us.
Mum says not all donkeys have an adventure everyday like we do. Some are kept in the same paddock every day and some don’t even have a donkey friend to spent time with. How dreadful that would be not to have a donkey friend. Mum said that she knows of donkeys alone in a paddock that only have a sheep or cow as its friend. The problem mum said is that the sheep or cow do not have the same intelligence as us donkeys. So when the donkey grows up it often has behavioural problems due to lack of intellectual stimulation. Isn’t that sad.
To keep us looking good mum brushes us every day. When it is cold our long hairy coats keep us warm so mum brushes us every day after breakfast. But when it gets hot mum brushes us after breakfast and before dinner. Each time mum shows me how much hair that is brushed off. It is very interesting. I am happy when she does this because lots of hair on a hot day makes us itchy.
We think it is great fun to be wet so when it rains we stand outside in the rain and get wet. I think mum has trouble understanding why we like getting wet. It just feels great. We also love playing in the soft wet soil which makes funny noises when we are running. Things are nice to eat when they are wet especially dad’s trees.
Another thing we like to do is play with our toys.
You can see how our life is full of great things to do.