Who had a birthday party in the barn every year for 35 years? SCHUYLER DID!
Celebrating Schuyler’s birthday was always a huge event, from his first to his last. On his first birthday, my two best friends, Amber and Dawn, and I spent all morning making horse-shaped sugar cookies. We burned most of them and left a massive mess in the kitchen, but Schuyler ate those horrible cookies anyway! We took silly pictures of him with a top hat on and us in silly poses. Each year after that, I would give him a coke and a candy bar. I know, definitely not things a horse should eat, but Schuyler was no ordinary horse. As he got older, he started getting a beer instead of a coke (which is actually good for horses!)
At Castle Farm, especially as he hit some milestone birthdays, we started to have big parties that everyone at the barn could come to. They weren’t much different from normal birthday parties. We would play games – his favorite was bobbing for apples, and he was good at it! Sometimes the other horses would join in, but very few of them could get the apples as quickly as Schuyler. Sometimes the people would join in too! We would have cake and ice cream. I always got Schuyler a carrot cake (ha ha), but he really had no preference. Schuyler would also get presents or special treatments on his birthday.
He’s had a massage, a laser treatment, a spa session with a nice cool bath, new grooming tools, etc. Usually, Schuyler didn’t like a lot of attention, but he would always make an exception on his birthday. For his 30th birthday, we did a photo shoot and had a birthday SMASH cake! For his last birthday, we also did a few photo recreations. Can you tell the difference?
