Phew! The car passed it's MOT. I feel as though I have been givien a reprieve at the eleventh hour for a crime I didn't committ. Silly isn't it? Even a pass costs over a hundred pounds now. Obscene really. But at least that's done for another year.

Struggling to find a "trial and tribulation" at the moment. Things are moving along nicely and I am touching wood as I type that it will stay that way for a little while. Strangles more or less a thing of the past as is the conjunctivitis although we still aren't happy about Sparky's eyes, they aren't quite right. We will cease the ointment and wait to see what happens and if the treatment was masking anything else. The prospective loanee for Bonny came over today, haven't heard from them for a couple of months, in fact we thought they had given up but they showed up today and the final arrangements for the animal are now in place.

And a break or two in the rain for most of the day meant that Millie and Adele had another outing and training session. It is obvious that Millie is bored with walking round and round the school as she wouldn't. Just stopped and stood there for ages at a time, Adrian and myself urging her on as nicely as we could without leading her but it was quite clear that she wasn't interested in what we were doing. She wasn't frightened or worried or anything, just not interested. Adele was much better, did several circuits of the school with a rider and is much more responsive than Millie. We know Millie well enough to realise that the next move has to be outside the gate and along the lanes. You really have to keep one step ahead of her all the time as she has a very low boredom threshold. She will be interested again if we take her round the lane but only once or twice and then we will have to go another direction with her even if it is just the reverse of the original one. We will also have to start long reining her as she has only ever been lead (when she wasn't leading us) and doesn't understand the leg aids yet. I predict much fun over the next months.

Oh my God.

Can it really be?

Is it true?

There is a break in the clouds!!!

It has stopped raining!!!

I can see sunshine!!!

No, hold on.

This is Wales.

It is actually raining while the sun shines.

Better luck next time then.

The phrase "Forty days and forty nights." keep popping into my head for some reason.

The Herd

Here are photos of the new herd, now complete again and more or less getting on together.





Isn't he a heartbreaker?

This is Dave, one of the two new goats that I brought home last week. I just couldn't call him anything other than Dave for some reason. He is a pygmy so has a bit of small goat attitude but it adds to their character I think. Can't recall how old he was now, not all that many years behind him.










And this is Winny, very doe like in her appearance and the largest of the four. Very Anglo -Nubian in her manners, panics at the drop of a hat and though incommand of the herd, looks to Dave for protection.











Here we have Violet in the foreground with Kaiser my other pygmy goat. And the final one is of all of them in my front garden. Well at least they aren't trying to head butt each other to death.

All in all a fine little group. We did try them in the same stable and it sort of worked but on reflection I think there is more work needed there. We have to let them sort it out amongst themselves really and not push it.

There is a song by Flanders and Swan that is a parody of the children's nursery rhyme "January brings the snow."

I think the lyric for July goes something like, "In July the sun is hot, is it shining? No, It's not." probably not a direct quote but you get the gist.

So true, so true.

I think it has rained every day now for about 10 days and I am beginning to remember what it was like last year and the year before when the rain seemed to be endless. All the fields are flooded again and this evening I went looking for my husband 45 minutes after he had popped out to feed Sasha her 7pm meal. He was in the barn having brought in 6 shivering ponies. We have probably lost the hay crop again as the farmer hasn't had a couple of dry days to get up here and what has really hacked me off is that I have a split in my wellies and consequently wet feet whenever I venture outside.

After a little while the whole rain thing loses it's charm. After a dry spell, you welcome rain for a day, but not every day. Still it is part of living in Wales I guess, we were told it rained a lot and at least I never have to water my garden. I am annoyed that I seem to have blight in my greenhouse again despite spraying it with whatever I was supposed to spray it with but I am beginning to think it is par for the course.

The new goats are settling in well. I would be happier if Winny was a bit more forward but Dave certainly makes up for that. I decided this afternoon that I would go and sit in the stable with them so they could get to know me a bit better and Dave spent the whole half an hour trying to eat my waterproof while Winny got close enough to be stroked but only with Dave in between us. They have been grazing with my other two goats in the area in front of the house and the distance between them gets smaller all the time, won't be long before I can put them all in a stable together, next week I think will be fine. Soon I shall be able to walk all 4 goats and hopefully the 4 dogs round the field. Even better than before. I really look forward to that moment.

Back again

Sorry chaps, I have been absent again I know but it was a manic week last week and some things got left. Don't give up on me.

As you all know last week was the sponsored ride undertaken by Tabby and Bethan, 135 miles over 6 days and not all of it went smoothly. At one point they got totally lost and without a map, luckily they had their GPS signal device so they could find out where they were by a phone call.

While they were away I was updating websites and facebook sites and keeping on top of my own e-mails, they seem to go on forever. And of course I am not ashamed to admit that at 9pm every evening last week I pulled the plug and watched Torchwood. As Dorcas would have said, "It's my one weakness." Actually it's not my only weakness, I am just a bit partial to single malt whisky and M & M's as well and last week I managed to slot in all 3 weaknesses. Oh well, never mind.

The return of the intrepid explorers coincided with a visit from our patron who played the part of Ianto in Torchwood. It is the first time he had visited and he was a very nice young man, he is now a keen supporter of the Trust and we hope to see him again soon. Once the girls came back and some photos were taken, we all stuffed ourselves on cake in the barn, a bit of a celebration was in order for their achievement. So we never really finished until gone 8.30 that evening and I was in bed and asleep by just gone 10. Shattered.

Sunday evening the people came and did their bat survey. There were 4 of them stationed at various places round and about the two barns and one of them was hooked up to some sound gear. It was a long evening for them, standing outside until gone 10.30. I found having people round here at that time quite off putting. I am not used to it at all now, once the last person leaves usually 4.30 or 5, we have the place to ourselves and all we have for company is the animals. Not a bad thing.

We think we may be at last coming out of our infectious period. No strangles now for nearly 4 weeks, the first infection has at last wandered off and the conjunctivitis is only hanging on to one horse and a donkey. Millie looks like she is beginning to heal up as well, she managed to tear a 6 inch length of skin off her face at one point but in fact that has helped in a way as there is nowhere for an infection to collect and she is starting to heal up even if she still looks a bit like something from "Thriller." How very topical of her.

We now have about 12 horses ready and waiting for the day when they can go out, someone has booked 3 of the shetlands and someone else is interested in Hamish, another shetland. Good news that is slightly dampened by the fact that another pony is to be returned, Champion, the palamino 12 hh pony is to be returned to us in a couple of weeks. His loan home have lost the grazing. They were quite upset by it all, Tabby could hear that in the background. Luckily he is a cracking first pony and assuming his fitness is up to scratch he will soon find another home I am sure.

Reassurance

Along with networking etc, we take a lot of phone calls on a daily basis.

Quite often we have to take them retrospectively as we are rarely in the office to take calls and even though we also have a phone in the main barn that rings 7 times before it goes on to voice mail, you don't always get there in time.

However I did get there in time this morning; as it happened I was cleaning out the stable that my goats are using temporarily.

It was a very nice lady from Leeds and she was asking for advice.

Apparently she had bought an elderly horse (she was told aged 20's, vet says 30's) from a dealer. It was not in very good knick but over a period of time she had nursed it back to full health, had it's teeth and feet done as much as could be, wormed it etc and she was very happy with the result. The mare was also very happy in it's new life and was showing how happy it was by greeting her at the gate, taking her children for very brief lead rein rides and enjoying her new found owner's attentions to the full. According to the caller, there are no physical problems with the mare that were causing any difficulties, all is well.

However, it is an elderly horse and she had been advised by various people that as such the only thing to do with the animal that old was to have it put down now. Get rid of it, chuck it out now, it'll never be of any use to you so save yourself money and do it NOW.

The lady was asking me if she should do what they said or should she keep it. I was a bit unsure of how to answer, after all I haven't seen the animal. So I asked her a few questions, the main one being "What do you want to do ?"

"I think she is fine and I would like to keep her."

"Then I would go with your gut instinct and keep her then. She may not last long, she may not last the winter but at least she will have had a summer of sun and love and when she gets to the end, that is what matters," is more or less what I said.

We have animals here of all ages, from 11 weeks old to 40 years old. Some animals live longer than others, some go before "their time" just like humans do. Just because an animal is over the age that we, the humans, have decided is their allotted span doesn't mean you automatically pull the plug on them. You don't pull the plug on your granny just because she hits 80 years old, nor should you assume that the elderly equine is incapable of enjoying their elderly life. Our 40 year old mares, Ginny and Lucy still canter around the field, bask in the sunshine, enjoy the food bucket and still try to graze even though they only have about 4 teeth between them. And indeed why shouldn't they? But one of the geldings who is only about 28, despite all our attempts, is simply fading away with old age. He is skin and bone. Nothing spare on him. But for the time being, he is as healthy as he can be, eats all the time, has a bit of a shine to his bony body and is himself. We will probably lose him this winter as he just isn't carrying enough weight now to get him through the cold weather no matter how many rugs we put on him. But we would no more have him put down now than fly to the moon. He is still himself and enjoying life and that is what counts, not the number of years he has behind him.

That was what I was trying to get the lady from Leeds to see and to be honest, she already knows what she wants to do. She wants to keep the mare until the end. All she needed was to hear it from someone else. You could hear the happiness in her voice.

So lady from Leeds, if you are in fact reading this, good luck with the mare, I am sure that she will give you great pleasure even for a short time and that when her time does come, you will deal with it in a compassionate way. It is the last act of kindness you can give any animal. She has been very lucky indeed to find you.

That'll be another weekend gone then.

I thought I would have so much more time to myself but as is often the case, you are actually busier when you don't go out to work full time.

Saturday was the Llangadog Carnival; a local event that we attended to raise awareness of the Trust on a local level. Doesn't that sound like I have worked in the modern world?



We couldn't take any ponies off site due to our strangles so we "borrowed " Corky and Suzie, two magnificent animals we have locally at loan homes and headed the procession right behind the Carnival queen. In the photo you can see the two horses, Suzie is in front with Bethan on board, Corky (all 17.3 hh of him) just behind. We walked through the village to the Rugby Club and stayed the afternoon manning the Lluest stall. Despite earlier rain it stayed fine all through and though we made no money at our stall, at least we made some more contacts.


A lot of our job is all about contacts and networking. You meet 25 people and hope that one of those will make a donation or perhaps know meet someone who knows someone else, someone who could help with fund raising or can spread the word about what we do. It's very hard work I have to say. On Saturday I met a woman from Arizona who is into rescuing the mustangs of the Western United States. Now that would be an interesting link to have, her rescuing mustangs and the Trust involved in rescuing Welsh Mountain ponies. I gave her a leaflet and hope that she contacts us when she gets home. You never know what could come out of that sort of contact. They probably have the same problems rescuing mustangs as we do apart from perhaps laminitis due to rich grass. There isn't a whole lot of rich grass in Arizona I should imagine, not that I have ever been there. I lived in Upstate New York which is about 2,000 miles from Arizona. Be nice to go on a fact finding mission though just to see what they do there. At least we would be guaranteed sunshine and no rain.

Into July now aren't we?

Somebody tell the grass to stop growing please, it is all I seem to do at the moment. Where I come from in Upstate New York the grass has stopped growing by July. Here it just goes on and on. And the edges, God save me from edges. When I die my idea of heaven will be somewhere that the grass is always green and tidy but never requires any maintenance. Did you know that before the lawn mower was invented, men cut the grass on country estates using a scythe and were accurate to a quarter of an inch long? Isn't that something? Twenty first century man can't achieve that unless it is on a golf course.

The donkeys look a bit of a mess at the moment. Adrian is going to find out if this eye rubbing is a "donkey thing" or if it is just something that Millie has taught the rest of them to do. With that and conjunctivitis they all look pretty skanky today. We had to put stuff in Eeyor's eyes, he is a dead certainty for conjunctivitis but the other three donkeys are on hold although they all have raw patches running from their eyes down the nose from the rubbing. There are 5 others we treated for conjunctivitis today as well, looks like hay fever but it isn't. Trouble is that it is quite contagious so if we aren't careful, the whole lot will get it and we have been there before.

Also had a phone call to say another pony is coming back in from a loan home so that will be 37 and another one we can't shift for a while. Apparently it isn't getting on with some other horses that are on the site so he is coming in for his own safety. We will soon have to put them on coat hangers in the wardrobe to find room for them all if we can't lift our quarantine soon.

Hot, hot, hot

And so it is up here so I don't know how they cope in the cities. I managed to do some work outside this morning, my fruit garden looks 100% better but round about noon I had to give in.

More problems with the animals, this time the donkeys. They get really hot and uncomfortable in this weather and have been rubbing their faces on trees and posts etc. The all have bare patches on their faces and Millie our Poitou donkey has a big scratch down her face halfway to her nose. Looks very strange and very uncomfortable. Adrian and Tabby have bathed it in tea tree oil to soothe it and keep the flies off but she will still rub.

Adrian is in the barn now with the clippers; every summer we try and clip Millie off. The Poitou donkey is really hairy, it has a coat a bit like an afghan hound actually. As a result anything you put on her tack-wise slides round. Clipping her down as far as we dare-well, as far as Millie will let us- sort of gives us a fighting chance to stay on her back and not end up hanging underneath her belly or sliding over the top of her head like I did once. As I type Adrian is all in one piece and despite the odd rear hoof flicking up, Millie is being very cooperative about it all. Trouble is that she is easily bored and he may only get one side done before she decides she has had enough and won't stand still or wrenches the clippers out of his hand. She does that with a smile on her face as well, a huge joke to a donkey.

Also arrived today was the dvd of our television debut. We were one of four groups of people, oddly enough one other couple came from Ipswich, that's two of us from East Anglia looking for new homes. Interesting isn't it? I wonder why?

Just arrived is our first foray into on line grocery shopping from a well known supermarket. We worked out how much it would be to take our Ford Ranger into a large enough town to do a reasonably priced big shop and the amount that we were charged for them to come out and deliver it to my door was several pounds cheaper. We have to go at least 6 miles to get a decent shop and a really big shop would be 30 miles from here easily. That's one of the disadvantages of living up on a mountain. My dream is to grow enough of my own stuff and hopefully have a milking goat as well to stop me having to dispose of all those plastic milk bottles that you get. I fear that is some time in the future though. And if you look at it, the driver is delivering all round this area so that means there aren't an extra lot of cars polluting the atmoshpere. Rather him in a hot and stuffy vehicke today than me, he looked well broiled.