Here are 7 little facts about my donkey and how his summer is going :)

1. I received an anon the other day asking if Pirou was still a working donkey who carries my firewood for me, and the answer is yes. I've been cutting some branches from the big cherry tree that fell down the other day, and Pirlouit has been valiantly carrying them to the woodshed—fun fact, for this activity he likes to wear his ears like this:

Probably because this T position is reminiscent of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, which is how Pirlouit perceives himself as he carries heavy logs for me. He's willing, but his martyrdom should be acknowledged.

Here's Poldine acknowledging it with a nose kiss, because Poldine.

I stopped so they could have their little chat.

2. Pirou has been chatting with a lot of new friends lately—we met these horses on a walk and he was so happy to stop and touch noses with them while making equid noises. Llamas are good with the nose-touching but their llama noises are just less interesting to Pirlouit. He had such interested ears here! "Finally a serious grown-up conversation"

We also met this goose during the same walk and Pirlouit was a lot less eager to go say hi to her. The goose was yelling threats at us and we prudently stayed away, and Pirou was clearly thinking "this bird is doing a better job at protecting her home from intruders than Pandolf ever could" (it's true, Pan assumes intruders are friends until proven otherwise)

3. You'll notice that there are houses in this pic! Our walks got longer and longer until one day we went all the way to the village (it took 1 hour 20min at Pirlouit's leisurely pace). I was so proud of him. I've been trying to convince my friends to go to the village on donkeyback (this requires two people, because you can ride Pirlouit but you can't tell him where to go unless there's someone holding his rope and leading the way)—my friends were reluctant because they still sort of perceive Pirou as the feral animal terrified of everything that he was when I got him. They know he's made a lot of progress but going to town on donkeyback still seemed foolhardy.

So we've been riding Pirlouit in the woods, in familiar environments, and we also went to town with him but without riding him. He was amazingly calm and brave! There's a river that cuts the village in two and the first time we went, we stopped before the bridge, since it's pretty narrow and cars would have to drive very close to Pirlouit, we didn't want to risk it. We just went to say hi to the librarian who lives on the right side of the river, but since Pirlouit was very serene, we did cross the bridge the second time.

He did not care at all about cars driving very close to him (he had one familiar human on either side of him and the drivers were very considerate and went slowly), which emboldened us to stop for a drink on the terrace of the coffeeshop on main street (< also a narrow street with cars driving by quite close to Pirlouit). There was just no problem at all, Pirou let total strangers rub his forehead and was more interested in iced tea than main street traffic.

It was a hot day and we gave him all the ice cubes from our drinks and he chewed them enthusiastically.

4. We made a stop at the pharmacy on our way home because we had another 1 hour 20min walk ahead and I had a blister, and the pharmacist noticed my donkey parked outside his shop and in a determined tone he said, "I want to try something." He took one of the donkey milk soaps from the overpriced-Provence-soaps-for-tourists display and opened the door and offered it for Pirlouit to sniff.

... I'm not sure what he was expecting—for my donkey to go "ohhh this smells like Mother's milk and aloe vera 🥺"—but unfortunately nothing happened.

(4. bis—Sorry, this 4th fact was anticlimactic.)

5. Pirlouit is now the proud owner of a surcingle. Not for equestrian vaulting and not for his log-carrying job because I don't know if it would be solid enough for the weight of a bag full of logs, but I'd like to tie bags or baskets to it to take Pirlouit grocery shopping, now that I know he's okay with going to town :) He even seems to enjoy the adventure, and the attention he gets from children.

And actually I shouldn't write off equestrian vaulting because Pirou is also remarkably chill with weird things happening on his back. I used to be very careful to climb on his back in a quick & fluid way so he wouldn't spook (because he used to! a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil used to spook him!) but now that my friends are riding him I can confirm we've reached a point where you can climb on Pirlouit's back in any way you want and he'll just be like "...... sure"

6. I almost forgot to mention that Pirou turned 15 last month, according to his ID papers :) Donkeys have a longer life expectancy than horses, they can live 30-40 years on average so he's still a young lad really. Happy 15th birthday Pirlouit :)

7. I wanted to conclude with a nice aesthetic pic of Pirou's shadow on the road during all those walks, like I did with Poldine, but unfortunately donkey shadows do not have the chic je-ne-sais-quoi of llama shadows. Pirlouit looks like a hammerhead shark wearing a tiny fez and that's not his fault.