This is true. I think her expression might just be a wink & thumbs up at all he COTH pony enablers 
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Growing up, there was a family that lived like 4 streets over had some large dogs they left out to bark their heads off all night, every night. Can’t imagine how annoying they must’ve been to their immediate neighbors when you could hear them from our house loud enough to be annoying. The police were out on noise complaints constantly. After a couple years of this, one-by-one, the dogs all met with mysterious, untimely ends. I was too young to remember if they ever figured out who was doing it – might’ve even been the owner.
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Poor dogs. It’s not their fault they had nobody that cared.
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I agree. It was horrible. Will have to ask my father if he remembers if the cops ever figured out who did it. I’ll tell you, though, to this day, I’m hypervigilant about my own dogs barking & possibly annoying folks.
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Yep, my dog has a dog door and I ask my neighbors CONSTANTLY if shes barking or otherwise being a pest. I also have cameras, so I can know every time she barks inside or out. The second she gets to the “annoying” threshold she will either lose her doggie door, or get a bark collar.
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Just wandered back this thread to see what the Annoying Critter was…
Hmmph! Cockatoo is kind of a letdown, I was hoping for the dinosaur-face chicken 
That said, Pony is adorable!
That face needs a cookie, pronto!
And the barking dog stories reminded me of the (very hot) Summer I lived in an attic apartment in the City with no AC, not even a window unit.
GSD showed up one night & spent several sleep-robbing hours barking nonstop.
It was hard enough getting a good night’s sleep w/o the noise 
I used to fold my sheets every morning & stick them in the freezer.
Stay up as late as I could, then put the chilled sheets on the bed & hopefully fall asleep before they warmed up 
But, I digress…
After a week of midnight barkfest, I went out & discovered the dog was friendly. No collar, but happy to see me.
I put a belt around his neck & walked him the 2 or 3 blocks to the local police station.
They took him - warned me he’d probably get PTS if he was unclaimed, sleep-deprived me said Have At It.
A couple nights later, dog was back 
I got a bottle of maple syrup & poured it all over Mr Friendly.
I sincerely hope he rolled in something foul before going home.
Never saw/heard him again.
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Sadly I don’t have any birds at the property I work at. A neighbor has peacocks but I haven’t seen them lately. 
This week’s daily dumb includes:
1: Flip horse is still lame. The poor horse hasn’t been sound since they arrived. I’m not sure what the owner plans but…🤷 In good news it is gaining weight with the…18 lbs of barn provided grain and at least 10 lbs of owner provided grain, as much beautiful orchard hay as it will eat in it’s stall and on pasture with an additional hay (our grass is slow to come in this season).
2: please don’t ever feed chia seeds to horses. They are nasty for those of us who have to soak them and then feed them to your horse.
3: Not drama, but seeing a horse get a medical procedure and feel better is chicken soup for the soul. The horse had an infection that was removed. With vet approval they were turned out in a small paddock and the horse was so happy. I was having a bad day and seeing the horse galump around was lovely.
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We have more people taking lessons from The Trainer Man.
For some of them, I am happy because something is better than nothing. For others, they need to move on to someone who actually knows what they’re doing.
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The lady who told me how rude I was because I wanted to ride in the arena a few weeks back just told me what a bad job I did on a clip job, and how cruel I am for doing it to start with.
The horse is 35+ years old, with Cushings, and is blind in one eye. I volunteered to do the clip for FREE because my big Clipmaster blades are already dull-ish and therefore I didn’t care if the horse had some skin scurf to plow through, like most thick-coated-in-the-summer horses would. The owner of this horse is THRILLED with the clipjob, as the old mare is 100x more comfortable. I warned her ahead of time that it wouldn’t be a show quality job and she was ok with that.
Lady. MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS, and keep your stupid mouth shut. I pretended I didn’t hear her and walked away. FFS. Cruel for clipping a Cushings horse in the summer, for god’s sake…
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Oh I used to get that. People are estupid. I had a horse that while she did not have Cushings had a very thick coat. I would place a light thin blanket on her during winter time as I had learned she was wretched in a big thick one. The lectures I got about how evil I was and when I gave her a “dress shields” (clip under her armpits) and a clip on her chest that really sent the critics off. One day I came out and here is my poor horse sopping sweaty wet in this blanket fit for Nebraska or Alaska that someone had taken upon themselves to put on her. She had tried to roll it off and off course it was caked with mud and trashed. I took it off, threw it outside her stall in a heap. The next day it was gone and no-one said another word to me.
People. 
Thank you for helping that poor horse.
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This! X 1000!
Back to subject:
I suck at clipping in general.
The one time I tried a Trace Clip on my TB, I made the fatal mistake of turning my head to talk to someone with clippers running.
Oops
Shortly after we moved to a new barn.
Low-key, family-run, mostly 4H kids.
Me & DH were the English oddities.
About a week after the move, BO Dad approached & asked about the Railroad Tracks clip job, featuring that near-surgical prep spot from my Oops
I explained.
His response:
“We thought the horse had mange”
Nowhere near Dumb on his part, but Oh, The Shame! 
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Sorry but 
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Oh, the clipping story reminded me!
I had a true black Welsh cross pony in the barn; black with chrome. He grew a winter coat like a yak (a shiny, healthy yak), and looked like an adorable stuffed toy.
He was for sale by his sadly outgrown child. New pony parents with small child looking for first pony come to see him. All went …okay. Child didn’t ride well enough for this pony, and probably wasn’t ready for a pony yet, but, okay.
I subsequently clip the pony, and he, of course, is that gun metal grey color that black horses clip out to. He’s also slick as a seal, and you can now see his lovely confo.
The new pony parents come back to see him a second time. I tell them how glad I am that they’ve come for a second look, as I’ve clipped the pony and he looks much better and you can actually see his confo.
New pony parents take a long look, and the father turns to me accusingly and says “You mean that wasn’t his real color?”
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Another Clip Fail tale:
Sorry - not sorry - to my trainer/friend for throwing him under the bus 
Pony owned by client needs clipping.
Trainer does one side. Very professional job, pony looks great…
Except, something (personal biz) necessitates Trainer leaving job 1/2 done.
For a week 
Luckily pony owners were very understanding*
*aided by parents not being horsefolk, pony was for very young kids.
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I once clipped Odie the Evil Burrito (first time, and he was pretty unhandled and naughty) and left his legs hairy in order to save myself a broken face. He looked like he was wearing 80s style leg warmers.
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I’ve got one!
At a barn I used to work for briefly, I was holding a boarders’ horse for somebody who was trying to come up with a new 3D printed hoof boot design. The boarder was also present - sweet lady, but extremely green. Said horse is her first horse ever after a lifetime of not interacting with horses at all.
As I’m chatting with the boot guy, he starts asking questions about the specifics of hoof trimming and also if donkey hooves are any different from horses’.
Before I manage to answer, the boarder interrupts with enthusiasm and confidence: “Of course they’re different! Donkeys have cloven hooves!”
Face, meet Palm.
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The owner of the dressage horse I leased used to clip in stages – imagine a YouTube video demo of various clips from most hairy to most nekkid – in case she got interrupted mid-clip. She and the horse also had a clipping routine down cold; to the point where she could gesture to him to hook his leg over hers, etc so she could even get perfect leg lines unassisted. 
She had groomed for FEI level riders for a long time. Obviously a big advantage over most of us right there!
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I do this regularly in the winter just to save myself time. We don’t show in the winter anyway, so I figure he can keep his mukluks, earmuffs & tobogan. Yeah, he looks a little silly, but no frostbite! 
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I do this on the horses, not so much interrupted but in case the clippers break. It only takes ONCE to have a set of clippers DIE with one side partially done and the other hairy. So now it’s trace, high trace, blanket, hunter, and full clip
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