The kittens are a week old.......

....but they still look more like ferrets than kittens! The ginger one's eyes are starting to open.

Interdressage

We sometimes do Interdressage competitions, where you do your dressage test at home, get someone to video it then upload it and the judges mark your test from the video. I't great for those of us who can't get our horses to an actual show.......

Anyway, this month there was an in hand competition which I had given up hope on being able to do with Sky because it hasn't stopped raining long enough. Still, the sun came out this morning and so I brushed the worst of the mud off her (don't think we'll get too many marks for turnout), and hampered by my two offspring, went out to do the test. First we had to overcome her fear of the horse eating sign next to the car park......


She actually did really well, in spite of Ali yelling at Éowyn, and Éowyn insisting on being in the video with us.......right at the end she saw a dog and got a bit distracted, but apart from that it was fine.

Here's the video: Interdressage March 2010 Class 8

Oh NO!!!!! A Dog!!!!

My friend Jane has gone off to the UK for a week or so and we are looking after her dog, Ruby. Aliénor is delighted of course and poor Ruby has to suffer being dragged over a series of makeshift jumps in the garden (Ali wants to do dog agility, the fact that we don't have a dog is neither here nor there.......mind you, she's pretty good over the jumps all by herself).

The cats, however, are NOT impressed one little bit......

More new arrivals......

The latest cat, Umalali, has been getting fat of late, and not that kind of squidgy fat that Cocktail has but the lumpy, containing babies fat that she shouldn't be able to have, as I had been lead to believe she'd been spayed........

This morning, she started following me around miaowing, which is unusual, she didn't even run away from Éowyn, which is VERY unusal, then at lunchtime I was just sitting down to me fishfinger sarnies and she starts having contractions......out pops a small black bundle, Éowyn finds the whole thing fascinating........

Bit more time goes by, another little black creature arrives, then after that a ginger one. How many, I'm wondering, thinking how am I going to find homes for a load of kittens? but thankfully she stops at three. And very cute they are too......

That must have hurt!!

The chickens like to make a lot of noise when they've laid an egg. I found one today that really must have made one of them squawk!!! It's bigger than a duck egg, here it is next to a duck egg and a normal size chicken egg........Aliénor, who is wise in the ways of chickens, says it'll be a double yolker. I shall save it for a breakfast fry up........

Day ride

Went for a lovely day ride in the sun today, Éowyn's Godmother offered to have both the kids all day so I made the most of my freedom!!

We found a new route to go to the nearby village of Vélines. We had to go past a field of cattle at one point, they started running towards the horses and the big jessies got scared and tried to run away.....oh dear.

We went up a nice steep hill which the boys found hard going, they're so unfit. Then had a picnic lunch looking out over the fabulous view.

Don't often get days off like this.....

Went to see some puppies......

A couple of weeks ago we took in a bitch and her pups that had been living right next to a local church. She'd whelped in a stand of pampas grass next to the road, it took me all afternoon to find the pups! Anyway, she belongs to a local shepherd, he came to take her and the pups home, she'd wandered off to have the pups and he couldn't find her, so had moved on with his flock and the locals had been feeding her. Pretty much as soon as we'd taken her in, he turned up to get her back. Today we went to see her at his farm and I was very plesantly surprised to find the bitch and her pups in a big airy clean barn surrounded by livestock. There was fresh straw everywhere, loads of hay, even salt for them. There were cows and very young calves, tiny lambs, some had been orphaned and were in with ewes that had lost their lambs to try to get them adopted, there were goats, chickens and an enormous black pig! Aliénor absolutely loved it!! None of the animals was scared of us at all.......