Happy Birthday Wisdom!

My puppy girl turned five this year! Hard to believe it's been that long since she was born in my bedroom.

(These photos were actually taken back in October, since fall photos of Wisdom always seem to turn out the best. This year, I decided to get shots of her before the leaves turned all brown and brittle.)

The Bachelor

I snapped these photos just three days before Nugget's new friend, Chism, arrived. As such, these are the last photos of our boy when he was the lone bachelor on the grounds.

Meet Chism

Guess what--we cloned our burro!

It certainly looks like we did, at least. Though our burro team was rather hoping for a jenny (female donkey) to take on the role of companion to our dear Nugget, we were informed by Longhopes that they wanted to give us a gelding instead. They told us about two burros in particular which they thought would make good companions to our own donkey. Our team reviewed all of the information on the two geldings and even played around with the idea of visiting before making a final decision; however, with the cold weather moving in so quickly and lack of availability of time, we decided to go with our gut and pick the gelding that had stood out to the entire group.

And so we have Chism! He arrived at the museum on the seventh of this month and hit it off real well with our Nugget boy. There is, of course, still a bit of restlessness amongst the two, but Nugget has established himself as the dominant and Chiz seems to have accepted those boundaries.

Say hello to Chism

Nugget (left) and his new buddy Chism

Chism begging for treats at the gate

Chism (foreground) and Nugget grazing in the round pen

The dynamic duo out to pasture together for the first time (Nugget is heads, Chiz is tails)