The Littlest Biggest Loser

So...what's a guy to do when swim suit season is coming and you have, uh, a "little" weight to take off? Folks who have miniature horses have a saying: "Minis gain weight on AIR!". It is very safe to say minis are very easy keepers. That brings us to "Quaker" (Mountain Meadows Quaker 6.8). Quaker was born very shortly after the Nisqually earthquake on February 28, 2002. His mama said something like, "This ground is arockin' and arollin' -- no WAY is this baby staying inside!" And so Quaker was born. Tell me, have you ever met a horse with a Richter scale reading in his name?

Today was the start of Quaker's weight loss program. First came the vital statistics: heart girth 45 inches, height at the withers (where the neck attaches to the back, kinda) 32 1/4 inches, body length from point of shoulder to point of buttocks 37 inches. Check, check and double check. Add the measurements to a way-cool spreadsheet and presto-chango, Quaker comes up weighing 213 pounds. Sounds pretty tiny, right? Nope. He needs to weigh LESS!

Second comes the new pasture arrangement. This means not being out with his buddies in the big grassy pasture, porking out on new, sweet spring grass. This means no hanging out debating and salivating over what might be served for dinner. This means, OH MY GOSH....no, no, not the 'Jenny Craig Pasture'! Some know it as "dry lot" where no grass grows. If it does, it is attacked, ripped from its precarious position and devoured in an instant. In other words --- the pasture is DIRT. But there Quaker will have a controlled diet. His breakfast will be weighed every morning and fed to just him. He won't be able to muscle in on the other guy's grub.

Third comes the weight loss. It will be lonely out there but slowly, ever so slowly Quaker will become the littlest of the biggest losers. If you are a horse, it just doesn't cut it being "fluffy".