Chance Encounters

By a strange coincidence, I met for the first time the two women who gave me so much practical help after Juma was killed. The first was Nicola Stephens who was the expert witness who gave me an independent valuation for Juma for the insurance company. Her credentials were perfect with a curriculum vitae that includes three-day eventing, showing and judging, as well as running her own sales, competition, and livery yard. Not only does she run semi-feral ponies on the Forest herself, but she has bred, brought on and sold ponies and horses for all disciplines. Her advice and eventual valuation were very helpful to me.

Yesterday I went to meet Beverley Molter who has become well-known for her calm and effective approach to ponies. She had invited me to come and see her ponies and we also put the world to rights for several hours. At the time of Juma's death, she was very supportive and again helped me with my insurance claim.

Beverley has managed to collect - and now breed - some of the finest New Forest ponies I have ever seen. She buys them privately and through the sales and brings them on slowly until they are ready to be sold. As well as good conformation, they all have excellent temperaments. 

Her five-year-old stallion, Mallards Wood Highlight (Frosty) has recently come fourth at the New Forest Breed Show and claimed the prize for the best Novice Ridden Stallion. He is by the renowned stallion, Applewitch Pure Magic. I spent many minutes giving him a lovely hug and stroking him in the stable and he was super polite about it all. Like all of her ponies, he lives out 24/7 only coming in for work and rest. 

Beverley has a batch of five two-year old colts including Frosty's son Forestmagic High Jinks (Moortown Nobby) (l), and Furzey Lodge Make Believe (r), who was licensed as a stallion in the spring. 

Flight of the Falcon (Fidleywood Falconer), Hollyhatch Heydey (Portmore Thunder Cloud), and Blueberry Blizzard (Brookshill Brumby) (l to r).

Why did I need help with my claim? It turned out that I was no longer a member of the Commoners' Defence Association who have their own solicitor, and the valuations given by the Agisters had not caught up with the significantly better prices that were being achieved at the on-line sales. These began during the pandemic and continued whilst repairs were made to the Beaulieu Road Sales Yard which had been set alight by car thieves. All of the money which I got for Juma has been promised to the organisers of the Feasibility Study into road safety cameras along the B3078. I certainly didn't want to keep it and would much rather have my pony back.

Watching the Detectives

The ponies at the Reserve are being monitored from all angles. As well as the official Lookers, we have householders on one side and even the cricket club members on the other. It is delightful to receive photos of them between visits. 

Pie by the entrance to the reserve on Sunday evening whose picture came with the message, "All looking fit and well x".

And photos from the private Lookers' blog where everyone records their visits and any non-urgent problems. 

As well as training by HIWWT, the Lookers have a set of rules - and plenty of contacts - about who and when to contact in an emergency which includes problems with a trough, gates and fencing, and anything which would present a danger to the livestock such as fly-tipping, recent fires and BBQs and dens. Blog etiquette requires that we don't go on about irrelevant matters - a bit like this one, it's mostly about horses and cows. 

Having had ponies out on the New Forest, where you have to work on the basis that No News is Good News, it's good to get a concrete reports every day or so. I was happy seeing my ponies once a week on the Forest knowing that accidents, incidents and collisions tend to get reported, but some Commoners' ponies are very good at eluding their owners for weeks or months on end and Agisters cannot be expected to put in a personal report on every pony they see on their travels; as it is they are very good at spotting problems even from the most subtle signs. 

I don't want to speak to soon, but none of the ponies have put on vast amounts of weight, despite having access to 75 acres and plenty of long grass. My only worry about them is the amount of flies. 

Mirroring

The new Exmoors at the HIWWT farm have settled in well. Jayne, who is the Grazing Manager as well as Senior Nature Recovery Manager for the South Downs & Coast (that's a very BIG badge!), has been befriending them. She has to walk a very fine line between getting them friendly enough to be caught by HIWWT staff and not that friendly that they go up to strangers. Her subtle body language is drawing this pony in. 

Just Browsing

Henrietta was wearing this adornment-cum-fascinator when we saw her yesterday. Apparently it is to appease the rain Gods and her prayers were answered overnight.

The long-legs and the long-ears have been so bored in their beige-coloured fields that we thought we would take them for a family walk. Considering they hadn't be out for so many months following my surgery, they were amazingly well-behaved. They were also very happy that the walk involved meal breaks - well, mainly one long meal break - and meandered along browsing on the long green grass and occasional tree. 

Henry and the donkeys did run off to their favourite spot once they were off their lead-reins but we soon caught up with them. 

We had time for a rest before moving on...

...everyone had plenty to eat...

...and when it was time to wander home again, we formed a caravan, and Henry counted everyone in.

Prince Amongst Ponies

I am so proud of this pair and happy that Prince has taken to the soft scarf. This is just his third clicker session and he has also allowed Ruth's daughter, L, to stroke his face and come up to someone else from the yard to say hello. Chasing a pony like this will never work.

Peggly

It is normal in my home village for ponies to have different names in different places. For example, one of the old mares that used to wander around this area was called Jubilee on the lower road and known as Mary on the higher road. I'm afraid we tended to call her Wormy because she was always very lean (sorry!). In our early days here, she had a foal in our garden; she gave everything to her foals. 

Later she had a foal which was sold to one of the people who lived in the village who fancied being a Commoner. However, he kept Rumball, as he called him, in the garage and got very cross when he walked on the lawn! When he left the New Forest, he gave Rumball, who we knew as Peggly, to my friend Angelika. 

When Rumball grew up, he was the spit of his mother, with the same equable temperament. He must be around twenty years old now and yesterday we saw him close to Telegraph Hill, shading from the sun, with his collar caught over his ear.

We approached him carefully, knowing that the road is a dangerous one and we neither wanted to draw him towards us or to frighten him into the road.

I waited for a gap in the traffic and as I drew closer he nickered to me and then quietly allowed me to sort his collar out. Then he looked a lot more comfortable but still fed up with the flies. 

The ponies shade by the road like this so that the traffic wafts some of the flies away and creates a breeze. 

Hook, Lines, and Sinkers

 

A day late for going up to Hook but fortunately one of the Lookers saw them yesterday. Pie was on his own, slowly munching his way to the bushes where the whole group like to hang out when the flies are at their worst. 

Knowing where to look I found them quite easily and then got 'found' myself by one of the immediate neighbours, M, who has only today confirmed that she would like to be one of the Lookers. What an asset to have practically on site. She also likes to litter-pick so she will be a true ally; I did a colossal amount but not all on site. 

I'm very pleased that Patsy's hooves have improved so much since she moved to the reserve. Here is one of Jack's and one of Nelly's showing the growth/incident lines which indicate changes of diet and nutrition. You'll see that the latest growth is really smooth.

Saying goodbye to lovely Blue, I then bumped into another neighbour, G, who had been concerned about the ponies' access to water. I had been able to reassure her and tell her that I would much rather people were concerned than disinterested. Apparently the ponies were enjoying the spray over the garden fence when G watered her flower-beds. 

M told me that when she moved into her house over twenty years ago, the common had been a bit of a wreck and when HIWWT took it over they removed endless piles of debris, including burnt out cars, before fencing it all and putting in narrow gates. I litter-picked this little lot from inside and outside the reserve, most of which was ancient. 

All of the bottles and cans will now be recycled.

On the way home I popped in to another reserve to see how the two Exmoors were getting on.