Horses, Horses and some Donkeys

Lorelei invited me to come along the other day and photograph some horses.  I was excited and scared all at once.  I've never spent much time around horses and I have a memory from childhood burned into my brain of a girl getting bitten on the cheek.  I can still see the giant welt, teeth marks and all.  :(

 But how can I turn down horses in such a beautiful setting?

The horses were kept in 3 different corrals and were segregated by age - yearlings, two year olds and brood mares.  Each corral had an adorable donkey in it.  We found out later the donkeys were in there as cougar bait - they are the slowest and smallest so in case of cougar attack, they'd be the first to go.  :( Fortunately they haven't had any cougar attacks since they added the donkeys so no donkeys have been harmed (yet).

We started at the yearlings and worked our way up through the ages.  The yearlings were friendly, and curious but a little hand shy.  They wanted to be near you, but they didn't want to be touched.  I tried to give them some apples and carrots and they were kind of excited by it, but couldn't figure out what to do with it.

The two year olds were even more friendly and curious and once they'd had a good sniff, you could scratch them.

In fact they were so friendly and curious it was hard to get photos of them.  I felt like the pied piper out there - everywhere I went I had a small following.  Heaven forbid I crouch down to get a photo...

Photo by Lorelei Hoffarth

It was actually amazing that it wasn't a 360 degree surrounding above, that is normally what it felt like at least.

Other times you'd be snapping away and suddenly your lens would be fogged up because some horse is investigating and breathing all over it.  LOL

Like everything in photography, a new subject takes a bit to get used to and the horses were no exception.  I couldn't predict how my actions would affect those of the horses.  I would see something I wanted to photograph, try and move into place but my movements would affect the horses.

So I ended up with lots of goofy shots, and not as many beautiful and majestic ones like I had originally anticipated.  But that's OK.  I don't mind goofy.  :)

Riding on a donkey.  :)

The brood mares were the most confident.  After failing in the last two corrals to give out treats, I didn't even try with these ones until I caught one of them digging in my pocket.  The donkey was particularly a fan of the yummies.