That donkey again....

Remember Rossy boy? The young donkey who was too much of a handful for his old owner? I originally blogged about him here
Anyway the elderly Appy I rehomed him with has since died so his owner found him somewhere else to live with a friend's horse. Only problem was getting him there. As she said it was only in St Michel de Montaigne which is only a few kms away I said no problem, I'll pony him there........
How hard can it be?

Well, remind me never to complain about Kinna's antics ever again. He was bucking, kicking, rearing, leaping about with all 4 feet off the floor before we'd even got to the end of the road. Not really his fault, he has been on his own for a while and not been out anywhere for ages. Gandalf was so not impressed, he hasn't been this pissed off with another equine since we ponied Coquinette to Naulet last year. He even aimed a kick at him a couple of times, he's never done that before!

Then we had some proper donkey plants, I'm not going that way, tail swishing, the lot. After about 20 minutes of this, Mike, who had set out running with us, doubled back to check we were OK and couldn't believe how little progress we'd made.......he took this pic of the horror actually standing still for a bit....

So on we went, but by now Gandalf had evidently decided to get this over and done with as quickly as possible so broke into a trot. Cue Rossy doing a spectacular display of cantering on the spot, more leaping, an attempt to bite him and finally nearly hitting the deck scrabbling about on the wet tarmac......I really with I had a headcam for moments like that!

Gandalf trotted on unperturbed, and we arrived at St Michel. Birthplace of the philosopher and poet Michel de Montaigne, not that Rossy cared about that. He was more interested in trying to chase the dog.

Great I thought, we can get rid of the little horror. except a quick call to his owner reveals it's not actually St Michel itself, but further on down another road nearly in the next commune. So I followed more directions and eventually ended up at Rossy's new abode.

Predictably he wouldn't go in to the field til I'd led Gandalf in, then the other horses started having a go at G, so I had to get him out of there, he didn't want to leave, Ross was showing everyone his heels, finally got G out of the field and left Ross to his new pals.

Far too much grass in there for him, but at least he's got plenty of space to run round and exercise. One of the other horses is off to a new home soon so he'll be left with one horsey pal, which is much better than being on his own.

Got back on G, headed home, got caught in the most enormous thunderstorm, totally soaked, G not bothered much by it but poor Choccy was totally terrified. Mike took the sensible option of getting a lift back with Rossy's owner. Gandalf was only really bothered by the road we were on turning into a river which meant he had to get his feet wet......

Really pleased with him though, he felt like his old self, full of beans, the grass & senior feed is obviously having the desired effect :-)

Handy Horse, not so Handy Pony....

Well we filmed our Handy Horse tests today. Gandalf, first take fine, as usual. But the NNP sure made a reappearance today!! She jumped a practise jump superbly:

and was not bothered about the flag either:

But when it came to filming........mademoiselle was not ready for her public!!!

Here's the outtakes video, she didn't want to jump, be near the flag, go into the maze, stop to let Ali pick up the sword or go past the hoop......

But we got there in the end, here's the finished videowithout the jump though, we decided it'd be easier to just take that out......

And here's Gandalf's video, complete with Ali's Blairwitch style videoing and extraneous dogs.......

Kinna's turn.....

....to go out on a hack. Poor Gandalf had an extra passenger today:

but he didn't seem to mind! Kinna started out well, but then decided she objected to not being allowed to graze the whole time and pulled lots of faces and showed poor Gandalf her teeth a few times!

Apart from that, she seemed to take the world in general in her stride, at one point a huge dog came rushing out to play with Choccy, Kinna had a good look but seemed to be OK about it, even when it was right under her!

So she went right back to annoying Gandalf......When the teeth came too close to SNO's leg, that was enough and she got off, which left me better able to deal with mademoiselle's shenanigans!

Lots of cars went past, even a moped and Kinna was fine.

After a while, SNO started whining about having to walk, so I put her back on Gandalf and led Kinna home.
Nice afternoon out with my girls!