Beginning to Sparkle a Bit

 Nelly, Blue and Jack are beginning to shine again and have put on a little, but not enough, weight. 

Patsy has gone just two fields away to live with Pie - they were always boyfriend and girlfriend on the Forest. 

All of them are being fed twice a day, with a big pile of hay to go to bed with. It's a combination of soaked food with a cereal topping. They're all really enjoying it. 

I am hoping that having each other for company, and a change of fields over time, their lives will be enriched and I help out by casting a few barley rings about and taking them for walks. Nelly, Jack and Henrietta were first and Jack and Henrietta went a bit barmy once they were let off for a few minutes. Meanwhile Nelly performed a few 'airs above the ground' on the end of the lead rein. 

Regime Change

 

Now is as good a time as any for a change in the way that the horses and ponies are managed. With a much higher horse to acre ratio, they are all going to need supplemental feeding to get them through this prolonged winter and possible throughout the year. While the ponies are building up again they are having soaked barley rings (good source of protein) with supplementary vitamins and some fast fibre. The big horses are enjoying this too. I have one hundred bales of hay on order for when the present supply runs out, and am glad that I didn't cut my strings with the best hay man for miles. Blue and Nelly have already perked up, whilst Patsy and Jack will need a little more time. No time for anymore photos today as I was busy de-lousing and de-ticking them all - something else that couldn't be done at the Reserve owing to its SSSI status. I shall miss it though. I had totally committed myself to that place and had done everything I could to help conserve it. 

Home Sweet Home

 

My ponies came home from the Hook Reserve today in two pairs of two. They travelled very well and seemed to be very pleased to be home. Now I will be able to feed them up, have a worm count and worm them, de-louse and de-tick them. 

Once they are more presentable, I hope we will have lots of visitors as there is plenty of pony brushing to do. 

The Spirit of Cooperation

Julie and I wandered off to Hampshire  Spirit Horse Rescue on Sunday to help out with their semi-feral ponies. The conditions under foot were just awful and I feel very sorry for those women trying to get feed out to all of their horses by wading through thick, gloopy mud. The ponies themselves are coping very well, there is some grass about and they have a huge round bale of really high quality hay. We were quite the comedy act trying not to lose out boots in the mud. 

With Cinders making good progress with Zoe and Bruno temporarily stationed with a food-aggressive horse, we concentrated entirely on Rea. Even though she has been quite feisty in the past, we took the decision to use clicker training to see how she might react. She was one of the fast learners on record and got the three click pattern almost straight away, standing still and waiting patiently during the single clicks and only looking for food when there were three clicks all together. 

Annalise took over from me and was soon into the swing of things to. With sessions divided up before and after lunch, and subdivided into with and without the feather duster, she made amazing progress and was soon touching Rea's back end with the feather duster. Each time Rea stood like a soldier throughout the single clicks and then politely took the treats when they were offered with the three clicks altogether.

At the end of the day we had an incident that one day I might find amusing but which was quite annoying at the time. A transporter turned up to take the two semi-feral Shetlands to their new home and insisted on standing on the ramp 'because it was her lorry' while we tried to gently herd them in. The ponies became quite distressed for a while and still this lady stayed where she was, offering things like lunge-reins to put behind them. Eventually, she did move, the ponies went straight in, and she was able to go. I promise I did not say, "I told you so!" but it was very tempting. 

Oh well, it does remind me of why I don't work with horses unless I really want to any more. 

Time to Come Home

Unfortunately this last week of awful weather seems to have taken its toll on my Reserve ponies and Jack and Patsy in particular have now crossed the line into being too lean. As my contract with the Trust is due to end in July anyway, I think it is best for them if I bring them home to begin the process of fattening them up in readiness for their next winter. It looks as if I will need to order in rather a lot of hay to supplement their feed to begin with. I shall miss traipsing up to Hook to see them, I really enjoyed seeing them in such a natural environment but I just can't push them any more. 

Dusky's Legacy

My friend, Donna, lost her horse of a lifetime just over a week ago and she is grief-stricken. In fact it has been a week of losses with Violet, Ocean, and Badger, all belonging to various friends crossing Rainbow Bridge. I understand the powerful feeling of loss that these people are feeling, the punch to the chest, the great hole left by their presence. It just hurts too much and for a while at least we've left this earth with the horse or pony, and would rather life just carried on without us. The loss of a horse, of any animal, takes away a chunk of our archives and leaves us in a different place to the one we were in the one before. 

Dusky was a Quarter Horse cross Appaloosa and her lineage goes all the way back to Secretariat. Every dot of her body was loved by Donna - and all the white bits too. 

Today we took all her rugs and other accoutrements to Hampshire Spirit Horse Rescue for them to keep for their rescued horses or sell for funding. What a brave thing for anyone to do.

Artistic Differences

 

Although I was happy with the loan arrangement for my ponies at Hook Common, the Trust suddenly insisted that I switch to a Grazing Licence which contained no formal provision for the checking of the ponies or what would happen in an emergency. Moreover it meant that once a year, for a period of twenty-four hours, the ponies would have to be moved off the land to somewhere else to ensure that the Trust were not setting up a tenancy. This would have been very distressing for the ponies. What with that, and the fact that I was being expected to cover the ponies for any damage they did if they escaped from the Reserve - which remember has 30 entrance gates for the public and some extremely fast roads running around it - felt a bit rich when the fencing was their responsibility. The alternative was for the Trust to buy the ponies off me for a £1! Being fifty miles away from the ponies suddenly felt like a long way away.

The end result is that they will be coming home on the 1st July, or thereabouts, having spent almost exactly a year on the site. For me and for them it has been an amazing adventure, and I have appreciated the quietness and wildness of a site that seems improbable within its noisy confines. At times it has been quite a test for the ponies - the insects, drought, two weeks of extremely hard frost, and then torrential rain meant that seventy-five acres of rough grazing was becoming insufficient for their needs, and it was a fine line between holding on for the grass and taking them home. Luckily the grass came through in the nick of time since the triple SSSI status of the land meant they could only receive a bale of hay on the one day that it snowed. 

I think that Jack would have to have come home at the beginning of the winter this year anyway. This is his first 'wild' forray since he was a foal, and as he turns twenty-six and his teeth are being worn away, he is going to need mollycoddling; similarly, Patsy, who is younger but due to being entirely wild all her life has never had her teeth rasped. Maybe I should attempt to tame her this summer and see if I can fit her in for her first dental appointment. In any event I am looking forward to gathering all of my animals to me.

 

As we pack our bags and reflect on this year, I think we can also say it was a job well done. The ponies have opened up the site completely, allowing new growth of flowers that have not been able to compete for so many years, and I have cleared years and years worth of rubbish off the site, around 100 black bags, including bottles and car parts, whilst encouraging the council to do their bit to remove fly tips from around the site. 

Smart and Sassy

 

A very nice set of mares have recently been turned out for the first time in Fritham, no doubt in anticipation of the arrival of one of the stallions selected for breeding on the Forest this year. [Edit: this little set have now been brought in again before the stallions are turned out on 9th May]. More information about the stallions that have been turned out over the years is available at New Forest Stallions.

At the moment they haven't quite got the hang of being 'wild' and so hung around my gate for a while in the hope that I might let them in with mine. It meant that a group of visiting cadets who have come from the Basingstoke area were treated to an idyllic sight when they arrived even though we had to waft these girls away.

I must say that I have been deeply impressed by the behaviour and enthusiasm of the voluntary Army Cadets, ranging in age from fourteen to nineteen, who despite the miserable weather, have been organised, polite, engaging and helpful. They loaded this 'Pick up Sticks' pile of post and rails onto the trailer, and when the car could get no further, they did all the donkey work themselves.

Whilst all of the cadets were here to concentrate on their orienteering skills - great to see the older ones teaching the younger ones - two of the cadets, H and R, were extremely pleased to meet with my horses and to help me feed them. 

Did someone say donkey work?

Principles

 

 

A video to make anyone smile...

Recovery Period

The last few days have hit me hard, if that's not an inappropriate phrase. Three of my friends have lost their lovely horses, Violet, Dusky and Ocean, and the trial of the man who killed Juma has reminded me of just how much of a burden it was waiting so long for the proceedings to take place, and how unfair it all seems to lose your pony in those circumstances; someeone's absolute stupidity. Basically, I miss Juma and no sentence, high or low, can replace him. 

It was not just about my beautiful pony, but about the joyous life that he was able to lead. 

Justice for Juma

Although the car is pictured in the dark; the offence took place in daylight

Oliver Heywood of Woodgreen was convicted on the 6th of April of driving without due care and attention when he killed my pony Juma on Roger Penny Way on 7th August, 2021. He admitted, when giving evidence, that he had seen Juma when he was three car lengths from the road, but did not slow down and then said 'the pony came out of nowhere and jumped on to my bonnet and then jumped off again.' He was fined £600 and costs of £600+ and disqualified for 6 months by the District Judge. At the time, the police officer estimated that the driver was travelling well in excess of the speed limit from the length of the skid marks but was unable to say so in court due to the fact that the skid marks and the vehicle itself was not forensically examined (something that is reserved only for the death of humans). The defendant's one year old daughter was in the back of the car.

Unfortunately people will have to read between the lines to see what has happened here. Generally the police, in agreement with the Verderers of the New Forest don't prosecute drivers for speeding or driving without due care and attention when they hit, and even kill, livestock on the Forest; their view is that it puts people off reporting any collisions that they have been involved with. The Verderers would prefer that people always report so that the animal can be put down as quickly as possible, and not left to suffer. Sadly hit and runs still happen anyway. In this particular case the police officer and the Crown Prosecution Service felt that the case was so bad that it must go forward; this was on the basis of the speed at which they believe that the defendant was travelling and the fact that there was a child in the car. 

Sadly there is unlikely to be any remorse from this driver, not only did he threaten to assault me a few weeks later, and use a stream of homophobic language, but of course he has never said sorry for killing Juma.

The great thing is that this case sends a message that even at 40 miles per hour you should slow down.

Many people think he should have received a harsher sentence but for the record, I am pleased with the conviction, and satisfied with the sentence, based on what the prosecution were able to prove. He has already had twenty months - the time it took to get to trial - in which he has had to drive more carefully. If the prosecution had been able to put the evidence revealed by the skid marks before the court, I have no doubt that things would have been a lot different, but the judge can only sentence on what he has before him. I am grateful to the officer and the prosecution for doing what they could and sticking with this case even though its perceived seriousness was reduced by this technicality. The reasons for the conviction, and for the sentence, given by the District Judge were very clear, and I will endeavour to get a copy.