Holly

Kooler's Blue Holly. Registered QH now living in Texas with Susan!! (That's Renee giving her a bath before she went to Texas.)

New Pictures 1/5/00

Update 5/6/01 - Long time, no email. I thought you might like to know how Ms. Holly is doing these days. She is wonderful! Very mellow. It's amazing how your non-human friends pick up on your stress, isn't it? Holly and her pony friends immediately got so mellow that we started calling them the "laid back hippie mares." *laugh* The 2nd week of January we discovered Holly laying flat out on her side and sleeping! This was big news, as the only time we had seem laying down before that was when I wormed her with Ivermectin and it made her so sick for about 36 hours. Due to Brett's traveling, we come and go at all hours and had never seen her laying down and sleeping. Now she sleeps and we've seen no more Narcolepsy symptoms. Not one! Can you imagine what a relief that is?? She still dozes standing up, but nothing scary happens.

Holly has a new friend. A wild male mallard duck who moved in with us in March. He spends the day in our pond and eats dinner with her every evening. He's a very funny duck, especially to be a wild one. He's seems half tame, but obviously has never had bread thrown to him like a park duck. They are so funny eating out of opposite sides of the same pan of grain. Holly was very curious about him and careful around him at first. Then one day he arrived after the grain was eaten and got really ticked and bossy with her. Hissing in her face, flapping and quacking, as she tried to eat her hay. Surprising, since he is smaller than her head! She kept pinning her ears and gesturing at him, but he didn't leave until she tried her standing too close trick. She hasn't been so interested in him since, and doesn't put up with much from him now. They still eat together, as long as he remembers who the guest is. We humans still enjoy having him around, though.

Hope you're doing well. I read your board every few days. Nice group of people. I'm very glad Holly has over 200 foster siblings out there!

Susan

Update 11/19/2003 - Holly is doing fine. She leads an uneventful life. Not boring, because there's plenty of wildlife and cats and whatall to visit with, but it's all the same old stuff.

I realized something the other day. Holly hasn't had a nosebleed since I quit XXXXXX. I don't know when they started, but they were getting very regular at the end of my XXXXXX time. The vet wanted me to bring into the clinic to scope her, but I elected to put it off. And it hasn't come back. I do think that wonderful horse was trying to tell me something. And I rarely see any narcolepsy now, either. But you should know that she is a very talented narcoleptic! Recently our farrier, Vernon, was working on her front right foot. I standing in front of her and could only see her head. I moved to the side and saw that she had her left rear foot cocked with essentially no weight on it. She was standing on 2 feet. I was a little amazed and stared for a few seconds. Well, that distraction was all the time she needed to fall into a deep sleep. I have to catch her before a certain point or she's really hard to wake up. Her head went down to her knees and I started pulling up, left, right, TALKING LOUDLY and tapping her head. I was afraid she would fall on Vernon. Vernon just kept right on working. He's a retired DPS sergeant. It takes more than a sleeping horse to worry him, even if she is on 2 legs. I never did wake her up. I didn't manage to unbalance her, either. When he put her foot down, she woke up. That part is normal. But I think staying balanced on 2 legs while someone moved her head around showed extraordinary talent! She's great! Hopefully I can end you a picture soon. Brett got a fancy new digital camera recently and has been meaning to take horsie pics. But he and the camera are in Japan right now.

Well, I'd better stop babbling at you. Give Moses a hug from me. And that little Dot, too. She's a cutie! Oh, just give everybody an extra hug for me. Tell them about Holly. I'm going to remind her about her Auntie Gail in the morning and tell her all about the TIER horses. I predict she makes a perturbed face at least once and does some chewing and smacking while she worries that those horses are coming to live with us! I'll explain it to her. They're staying there, but she can think healing thoughts for Moses.