Murder most fowl and runaway mares......

My neighbour came round yesterday to show me how to kill, pluck and gut our 2 Guineafowl. What has this to do with horses? Well, my neighbour Josette is in her eighties, the house we live in used to be a bakery which was built by her grandparents and she has loads of lovely stories from her childhood when her parents ran the bakery.

Whilst she was sorting out my fowl (glad to see the back of them actually, they made a dreadful noise and kept attacking the chickens and even Aliénor!! But they do taste good......) she was telling me about delivering the bread for her father.

It was shortly after the war, and they kept a cob mare to pull the cart to make the bread deliveries. When Josette was about fourteen, her father entrusted to her and her cousin the job of delivering bread to various farms and houses dotted about the region. He harnessed up the mare, loaded the bread, and told Josette on no account to get the whip anywhere near the horse, as she walked along smartly enough without any encouragement. Josette duly set off conservatively down the road at a walk. Once out of sight of her father, however, she gave the mare a flick of the whip. The horse objected to this and set off at a gallop. This was OK on the straight main road, but they needed to turn off down a side road, Josette tugged on the reins to make the turn but the mare didn't slow and went round the corner at such a speed the whole lot went over, horse, cart, bread, and two girls ended up on the floor......!!! The mare skinned her knees, the shafts snapped off the cart and the bread was spread round the countryside. Luckily no serious damage was done but she was in serious trouble with her father!

"But I never admitted to him that I'd whipped the horse", she told me, he never found out til the day he died!

The boys are back!

Went to get the boys today. They both look none the worse for their ordeal, Flecha has definitely got fatter this week! Thought we might have problems loading Ross but he followed Flech up the ramp with some alacrity - I think he was worried about being left behind!

They were happy to be out on grass again, Flecha's head never left the floor even though he's never been to Heather's (the owner of Ross) before, no time to admire the scenery, just get on with the important business of filling my belly.......

Update on the boys

Went to see the two "geldings" today. They both seem fine, moving easily and eating well - especially Flecha apparently who started munching as soon as he came round from the op!! He has searched the entire (quite large) box for every last wisp of hay, he's such a greedy boy. Luckily their bed is sand, not straw or he would have eaten it all.......

Ross likes the sand, he has been rolling in it regularly so he can't be feeling too sorry for himself either. The girls looking after them say they have been as good as gold, even not minding the daily showers of their tender bits.

Waiting to hear from the vet (who wasn't around when I was there earlier) as to when we can go and fetch them........

The boys go for the chop......

The pony and the donkey have gone to the vet's today to be gelded. Fun and games at 8 o clock this morning as Ross decided he didn't want to load. Flecha sauntered up the ramp and immediately started eating the straw on the floor, but Ross was not going in, no way, I can do that other little trailer because I know it won't eat me but this is new and big dangerous........He wouldn't even go in for food!! So eventually, me and the lorry owner virtually carried him in (good job he's a small donkey). Ali had the lead rein and we linked hands behind him and pushed him in, then he just stood there with a "how did that happen?" expression on his face.

They looked very small in the lorry......

When we got there of course, he didn't want to get out, then he didn't want to go into the box they'd prepared for him.......maybe he's got an idea of what he's there for! Flecha on the other hand was delighted to be out and about, in a big box with hay to munch and even some left over food in the manger from a previous occupant (the manger is horse height from the floor but he still managed to crane his neck up to get at the leftovers!)

Anyway, the vet has just phoned to say the ops went well and they've both come round OK from the anaesthetic.. They will probably be back on Thursday. I shan't miss my early morning donkey alarm call tomorrow........

Delinquent donkey

So while I'm waiting for my girl to arrive, I seem to have acquired a donkey for a while. He belongs to a friend nearby and being a 3 year old "entier", had decided that he was the boss and was pushing her around. She actually decided she needed to rehome him so I brought him here while she found a new home.


He and our pony Flecha had a prolonged willy waving session to decide who was boss:







Flecha won.








Now they are best friends and Ross the donkey is a much happier animal. He's been for waks round the village and has been as good as gold (it took him approximately 5 minutes to realize he couldn't behave like a moody teenager here in Barnes' Boot Camp).


His owner has decided she'd like to keep him after all. He's here now until he gets his (impressively sized) dangly bits removed next week.....

A new project....

In June, I sold my second horse and decided that the next one would be a baby because I don't want to spend all my time correcting other people's mistakes (OK, so that's exactly what I'm doing with a donkey right now, but that's another story.....). I went to see several youngsters here in France, but even these yearlings and two year olds have problems, merely because they've generally never been handled, some of them we couldn't even get near, so no way could we imagine getting them in a trailer! I have always wanted an Appaloosa horse, a "Spotty Botty", but they are very expensive here, so I started looking back in the UK. And I found this:




An Appaloosa x cob filly who actually looked like she might grow up strong enough to carry me around!! Also, the price wasn't outrageous......

So I blagged the price of a flight to the UK, turned up on mum's doorstep and set off to not so sunny Herefordshire the next morning to see this baby. What a treat! A field full of beautiful coloured horses, mares and foals running with a magnificent Appaloosa stallion, it was an amazing sight......the mares were all big gentle cobs, reminding me of my current horse, the lovely Gandalf, chunky and well mannered. I decided pretty much right away I would have her and paid my deposit that morning, took a ton of photos and rushed back to the airport for my flight home.

Now all I have to do is wait for her to arrive in November after weaning.........