19th December, 2009 An entertaining lunch

Yesterday Jenny and the Screamers as we are becoming known, had lunch with the Animal Rescue Team as their way of saying thank you for the acting work we have done over the last year. Me, I'm just the agent but next year I hope to be looking for more people as the Animal Rescue Courses get extended even further. Jim, Anton, Buster and Colin are hoping to make the new Animal Rescue Headquarters at Lyndhurst a centre of excellence for animal rescue on this country and have exciting plans to build up a team of trauma vets aswell as inter-force competitions. A former three day eventing course in the Forest has been offered as a venue for staging all types of rescues. Although we always have a great laugh, the purpose behind these courses is deadly serious and the training aims to make fire officers and vets safe and professional, to protect the public and to save the lives of animals in difficulty. I know of several people who have the fire service to thank for getting their horses out of a predicament even in this county including a poorly foal that fell down and couldn't get up and a horse that went through a cattle grid. In the old days it would almost certainly have been curtains.