JuJu the donkey Comes Home For Valentines

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Mission : Get JuJu and bring her ass home!



Thank you SOOOOOOO much Jenn and Ian for helping me get JuJu home in an easy, non violent way! Ya'll are great friends! :)))))

xoxoxox

JuJu the donkey, Lost and Found Part 2

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I try again to get JuJu to come home with me.



As you see she doesn't make it all the way. My new suspicion is that she does not like the neighbors dog- which has always been true but it may have been a bit more acute with her hormonal state. Donkey naturally hate canines, particularly coyotes, and are only a bit tolerant of domesticated dogs and sometimes they are not even that - they will kill them.
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So here is my next plan of action::::
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Plan #1 --- go get JuJu without the dog around
Plan #2 --- tie her to the back of my truck and tug her home slowly (but i need help with that one...)
Plan #3 --- hold up a mirror and let her fall in love with her own reflection, and she can follow the mirror home. (thanks for the idea Noel!)


oxoxox

JuJu, Lost and (sort of) Found

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So this morning when i got up all was quiet. Too quiet. No hee haw's coming from outside the cabin and I thought maybe JuJu was really busy digging on some hay, but when i called her and walked all around the property she was no where to be found.
I whistled, i yelled, i started to cry. No donkey.
We had snow last night and locating her tracks was a little confusing at first because the snow had filled them back in some, just enough to make them sketchy to identify while i was in a panic.
Eventually there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow....
or a donkey in heat.
And trying to tell a donkey in heat what to do is like trying to direct a tsunami.



xoxoxo

JuJu the Donkey Discovers Her Own Reflection

On our walks together, JuJu has discovered many new things... things that are sometimes big and scary, things that are loud and noisy, fake animals, real animals, so many humans, so many creeks. Most of which she must slowly approach, each new situation is assessed in her mind for safety and potential fun before she can fully relax.
So when she discovered her own reflection, I thought possibly something terrible had happened.
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I was picking chestnuts with my neighbor Nancy (at another neighbor's house who was out of town) when JuJu the donkey suddenly took off running! At the rate JuJu was going I thought she might run clear straight home, alone! I gave her a whistle and she soon came trotting back. Literally trotting like a freaked out show pony. She ran back behind the house we are at...
I assumed there was a large animal, either in the flesh or by scent because the only time I ever saw her run like that was in the threat of a bear nearby. Nancy wanted to know for sure and walked back behind the house only to discover JuJu looking at herself in the giant reflective windows!!

"Leslie, you better get back here I think she is going to go through the window, she seems really upset!"

I jumped down off the rock ledge from the chestnut tree and ran back there to find JuJu looking at herself in the window, and showing the reflection she was now IN HEAT!
Opening and closing her mouth, breathing out, making chewing sounds, lifting her tail (all symptoms of a donkey in heat)! She got hawt for her own beautiful self mirrored back to her!

Drooling and wiping her snot nose on the out of town neighbor's windows... she then took a piss and 2 big shits on their lawn too. Nicely mowed lawn.

JuJu was fully smitten with that "donkey"!

It took a LONG time to get JuJu to leave her reflection. I thought if the sun went down we'd be in luck, but it turned out the windows were tinted to be reflective on the outside regardless of light. The amount of coaxing I did was going no where. Treats were going no where. Nothing is as powerful as the urge to mate, I began to think, as I paced back and forth along the road hoping she'd come. I finally went back and waved my arms in front the window to make it seem hazardous. I tried stomping my foot, i tried pulling her rope. Running her off. Finally I just cursed, got mad and stormed off, thinking I had no idea how to get out this pickle.

Then, JuJu came running behind me.

I suppose there are some things stronger then the urge to mate. I am not sure what you call it though. She did Hee Haw back in the direction of her new friend half way home, just in case they might want to join us. :)

XOxoxo

JuJu the Donkey's False Pregnancy

So yesterday I walked out to check on JuJu Bean after she went into a Hee-Hawing spree... when I got to the gate she didn't come up to greet me as usual, instead she stood about 15 feet away with her legs apart while urinating, staring at me with her mouth wide open and making a weird breathing out sound. Of course, I was concerned and went up to her, which only increased what seemed like distress - she began pointing to her belly with her face and breathing out. It looked like she was choking cause some drool came out and I immediately ran to the phone to call my horse loving neighbor, to find out WTF this was!
COLIC, is what she thought and said I had to "walk her" - i took no time at all to open the gate, I didn't even care about haltering her open wide mouth, I just asked JuJu to walk with me and she came out the gate. I carried the halter on my shoulder and began to walk down the road. She followed, with her head slung down and mouth open.
JuJu chose where to go and I didn't care where we went as long as we walked out the colic and she wouldn't die. When she chose to visit her favorite neighbor (the one I called), she stopped in her yard and began eating.
We both noted right away, that with colic she would not be eating... we wondered. Then noticed how she wasn't seeming sickly, she wasn't dropping down and rolling around, then we checked her gums and they were pink (not red like when they colic). In fact she lacked most the symptoms of colic.
I watched her and noticed she kept stopping to pee (aka frequent urination), whether pee came out or not, sometimes a dribble, sometimes cloudy white/yellow, sometimes normal - every time she stopped to pee she would again seemed distressed, turn to point to her belly and breath out. Her tail was staying out and stiff, and her JuJu vagina was opening and closing alot (also known as "winking").
Back to the drawing board, we started googling "frequent urination" to find out some possible causes... it came down to two choices....
Either JuJu was Pregnant!
OR in heat.
Since she was displaying more symptoms of pregnancy then I ever realized, I started to freak out.... The indentation in front the hips becoming deepened when the baby drops, the urinating, the abdominal distress, pointing to her belly, her recent mood swings & discontent with the chickens recently, she was pacing alot, and had become more aggressive with kicking. THEN the clincher for me...
I pulled on her teets (donkey udder) and some clear liquid shot out, twice. At that moment I was convinced she was preggers and I felt like a mom who just found out her teenage daughter was going into labor and it was Juuuust dawning on her why her daughter was wearing all those big baggy sweaters all summer long. duh, how could I have missed it! I panic'ed... then .....
I GOT REALLLlllLLLlLLLY Excited about DONKEY BABIES!!!! YAY!
I got JuJu back home from the neighbors (by herding her with two cars and some rope)- and went right away to constantly checking on her and being on a baby high.

So when I woke up this morning and there was still no baby donkey, I got worried again she was sick, and finally got a vet to call me back about it.

Turns out donkey's do alot of this when they go into heat (open mouth, urinating- watch a video here of how strange it is). They will show their signs of heat not only to male donkeys (Jacks) but also to other female donkeys (Jennys) ... and to their human friends (ME!)

Not only that but donkeys more then horses have false pregnancies- (Oh, what a let down, deflated whoopie cushion feeling!) AND even stranger is they have a menstrual cycle that even though doesn't produce blood like in humans can actually cause equine menstrual cramps (OMGAWD, how awful.)

I still LOVE you JuJu , even if you ain't got no baby in your belly and you are hawt for me!

XOxoxox