Poor Skysie..... :-(

So recently, young Skyfaxa has finally started to get her act together. After her little strop at the TREC the other week, we weren't expecting too much when we went back to the stables for the half term fun show. To be on the safe side, I entered her in the mini jumping class, and Ali was fully expecting to be beaten by a four year old on a lead rein.

But no, Missy decided she'd be fine with going into the indoor school this time and actually made an effort to jump some of the (tiny) obstacles!

Which meant we felt a bit guilty entering a 13 year old against the tinies, we had to explain why to the other parents, some of whom, having jumped round alongside their 4 year old bouncing about on a small hairy pony, were giving us frosty looks and muttering about unfairness.....especially when it turned out Sky had won!

So Ali immediately started planning more stuff to do, after all, she's rising 5 and will be capable of a bit more than last year when, as always, there's a setback. She came in looking a bit short in front the other night and the next morning was definitely lame in her near fore. Nothing obvious form looking at the hoof, but I suspect there's an abscess brewing. Given our previous experiences with getting them dug out, and the conditions in the field right now, we've decided to just leave it to work its own way out. I think I'm with Joe Camp on this anyway....

Quite unbelievable trip to the vet....

Our rescue ponies, Ruby and Ebony, needed a trip to the vet yesterday, Ebony has an abscess in her foot, the vet came out on Monday to see it and gave us poultices to put on and said to bring her up to him for a check up in a few days. We took Ruby too as she's developed a lump on her neck and we wanted to get it checked out.

So the girls loaded fine and off we went. When we arrived they were a bit on edge, not knowing where they were. The vet started with Ruby, he got the clippers out to remove the hair from around the lump, she wasn't happy about them being anywhere near her. So he shouted at her, not a good start, then decided she'd need sedating. He gave her enough sedative to make her seriously wobbly, then insisted we drag her across to the ultrasound machine to check out the lump which is also an abscess.

Then he turned his attention to Ebony's foot and has basically butchered it looking for this abscess:

When I asked if this was really necessary, he was quite rude! This is the same vet we took Gandalf to about his lump and there were no problems at all and he was very charming and handled him competently. Yesterday it was like he was a different person...... By the time he'd finished with Ebony's foot, Ruby was able to walk more normally but was still obviously under the effects of the sedative. We were a bit concerned about loading her, and were taking it slowly, understandably she was hesitant about going up the ramp in her wobbly state. Next thing we know, the vet has reappeared and after making some condescending comment about English trailers being no good and we should have bought a Fautras, proceeded to fetch a broom and start waving it about behind her. As if this wasn't bad enough he hit her with it, we really couldn't believe our eyes!!

So that is the last time we'll be using that vet, some much for trusting so called professionals........!!

His name is Laurent Duhard, he is in 24700 Ménesplet, avoid him like the plague!