watch a video of ZARA'S PARTY
filmed by Ali Fritz http://miwokshowteam.blogspot.com/

Zara’s Safari Birthday Party
Gone is the simple game of pin the tail on the donkey and cake in the back yard. These days if you Google birthday party you get 13,200,000 themes and venues, none topping the party Linda gave for Zara, our foal, on her first birthday. Sixty Livery guests of all ages came to her party at a 400-acre wild animal park in the Sonoma hills for a guided trek among the exotic mammals and birds of Safari West.

We were introduced to Cheetahs, monkeys, and lynx, walked through aviary gardens and bounced in open touring trucks among giraffes, gazelles, and African cattle. We ate chicken BBQ and Zara’s carrot Birthday Cake and sweltered in the unseasonable Serengheti heat. After lunch, we went through a secret gate in the Park’s fence into the small horse farm next door, where our foal, Zara, daughter of Livery school horse, Molly, lives with her three young sisters.

Zara was dressed to party – red and white ribbons braided in her mane, and sporting a new red and white polka-dotted halter. A hint of the size of our baby girl, the halter is a full-horse size and fit the one-year old perfectly.

Zara put on a good show; when she and her three sisters were brought into the arena, Zara left her sisters and walked calmly along the fence, greeting each one of the sixty of us with her soft muzzle, accepting treats like the princess she is. Linda and Claudia, the trainer, tried to get Zara to run with the other horses, but however hard they cracked the whip, Zara would wheel and turn back to the rail to schmooze with her fans, preferring people to horses, and handouts to exercise, eliciting bursts of laughter from the crowd.

Linda presented Zara with a heart-shaped cake of apples, carrots, bran and molasses, which the little horse shared nicely with her sisters. We sang Happy Birthday to her, and drifted back to our cars, mopping our hot brows, feeling like we really had been to Africa and had a grand adventure for a day.

Safari West is open year-round, and in addition to tours, has deluxe tents and cottages where you can spend the night watching giraffes and gazelles from your veranda. More than a tour park, Safari West’s principal purpose, for which it is respected world-wide, is breeding rare and nearly extinct species. Plan on a visit; it is a wonderful experience, with or without cake.

 

OPEN HOUSE
& Easter Egg Hunts April 12.

The Spring Open House crowds seem to multiply like rabbits every year; two hundred came the first year,four hundred the second year, and this year well over six hundred moms, dads, and kids streamed out to the huntfield to search for easter eggs.

Charlotte Venner and daughter Laura prepared for weeks, boiling and dyeing 3,000 eggs which they talked Clover Stornetta into donating, and persuaded Delano’s Market to keep refrigerated. For the first time, we did not run out of eggs. It takes a village. Show Team moms, Cathy Madison, Jill Anderson, Ruth Anne Appel and Barbara Finnegan staffed the bake sale with Coach Bianca’s mom, Susan Stark, Sharon Morrissey and Sandra Sloan, Bridget Radachy, Isabella Jaye and Brina Appel. The Face Painting booth was manned by Team riders Taylor Kinney, Rochelle Nisam, Kayla Derby, Isabel Fife-Cook, Kendal Finnegan, Kendal Harcourt and Whitney Meyers.

We had a veterinarian, Dan Venner, an obstetrician, Dorothy Dube, and an MBA in Crisis Management, Molly McArthur hiding eggs in the huntfield. Professor/Docent Jeannene Przyblyski gave her barn tour, and Don Moseman ran his nature photography show in the haybarn. Instructor Caitlin Ahlberg entranced the children as the Easter Bunny.

Forgive us if we’ve left anyone out - in a crowd of six-hundred heads, some in Easter bonnets, others in rabbit ears, we might not have spotted you, but we thank everyone for making the day a success.

The Annual Spring Open House is a no-fee event put on by Miwok Stables Center and Miwok Livery so the general public can enjoy the horses and see the stables. Although not intended to be a fund raiser, the food booth and donation boxes brought in $1,400, which goes to the Center’s Scholarship Fund for Outreach Programs.