This morning we arranged for the collection of a temporary resident. So now we have two brainboxes in the field. Jack might be a horse but he well recognises the body language of a mule these days and is understandably wary of a swishing tail. 'Muley' has come from one of the New Forest Commoners that I have actually been dying to meet since I knew that he is very keen on mules, something that cannot be said of the rest of them! Apparently he calls them all 'Muley' so that they can be named by their respective owners when they change address.
This 'Muley' will be living with another mule called Betty. When Betty was a baby she looked like this...
The two are evenly matched size-wise.
Back to shorter ears this afternoon with lovely Dottie. A short ridden session since we are not totally happy with the saddle and didn't want to push her towards a 'no'. Instead we repeated the work we did last time, this time using human 'cones' as the outside of our school.
You may wonder how come I throw horses together quite so readily when there are a range of diseases that they can pass from one to another. As anyone knows. moving their horse to a new livery yard, this is always a worry along with the serious squabbles that horse can have when they are put in together. I take a calculated risk on the basis that I match the horses as well as I can, observe them for as long as I can, and reason that the owner of the visiting horse is taking the same risk as I am. My own horses have access to a constant stream of ponies passing on the Forest although we take great care to back them off the fence-line when we know there is something going around as it was a couple of years ago.
