It took some work to get all the usual jobs done and pack the trailer for an extended weekend trip, but by 3pm we were on the road – two dogs on the back seat, eight ferrets in the boot (in three carriers) and a trailer loaded with runs, gas cylinder and stove, dog crate, uncle Tom Cobley and all.

The run west from my home is a lovely one – back roads to Turriff, then back roads again to Huntly before a short main road spell before turning off into the hills. We passed the field where Dancer was born on the road to Dufftown, bypassed Grantown on Spey and crawled carefully through Aviemore, where the roads were neck-deep in bikes and trikes and people wearing leather and kevlar (in other words, the Thunder in the Glens bike rally) and then the long run onwards to Spean Bridge and a few last miles along the Great Glen to reach the Lochaber Show’s site at Torlundy, just short of Fort William.

It took a little time to set up the ferret run and move the ferrets out into it, then I left them all fighting, playing, eating mice and unwinding after the journey while I tied a tarp from the roof bars of the car over the tailgate and then to the back end of the trailer, which provided the dogs with a nice roof over their crate so they could chill a bit and have their dinners.

Finally, I brewed up and relaxed with a cup of tea while catching up with friends I haven’t seen for a while, as well as others I’ve seen more recently.

The ferrets slept all night in their run, while the dogs and I curled up in the back of the car. Being short has advantages – being able to sleep comfortably diagonally across the back of a car with the seats down is one of them.

Some time ago I saw a logo on the boxes of a certain egg company that proudly declared all their chickens were fed ‘a good vegetarian diet’. As far as I’m concerned this is practically cruelty – just like the so-called ‘vegan cat diets’.

Hens are NOT vegetarians by nature, they are omnivores with a decided taste for meat!

Mine have proved that today by catching, killing and eating a mouse. Mostly they hunt insects as well as picking up seeds, tugging worms out of their holes, nipping bits of grass and other vegetation up with their beaks and poking through the barns in search of spilled grain, layer’s pellets and rabbit food but previous hens have hunted frogs, caught mice, scoffed raw eggs, stolen food from the ferrets (who are even more obligate carnivores than cats) and dogs (omnivores on a raw diet) and I’ve even seen a large cockerel stalk and kill a young rat! I’ve no doubt this lot will be equally adventurous now they’re completely free range and their beaks have grown back properly.

Speaking of beaks, my bunch have obviously had their beaks trimmed as youngsters as the top piece is still slightly shorter than the bottom (it would originally have been just half the length); this is a way of stopping intensively-farmed chickens from killing each other. There are so many reasons to dislike intensive farming but the deliberate mutilation of perfectly healthy animals in order to prevent them from expressing their distress by self harm or harming others is right at the top of my list, from beak-trimming chickens to cutting pigs’ tails off (this prevents other pigs biting them off – which is barbaric, on a par with ‘this child may starve so to prevent them stealing food let’s cut their hands off’). I had a job for a few months working in a so-called ‘free range egg farm’ in the 90s and the scariest thing I’ve experienced with any bird was walking into one of the sheds after the feed conveyor broke down: 7,000 hungry chickens all turned and looked at me, and there was no doubt in my mind they were considering whether humans were edible. It was a moment when I remembered chickens are fairly closely related to velociraptors. According to one article I read recently, chickens are the closest living relation to the T. rex!

I may say that when I’ve kept pigs in the past, they’ve been outdoor pigs with nice shelters and plenty of space and food. As a result I never needed to clip teeth, crate sows or cut tails off – they all lived quite happily together and didn’t harm anyone.

Alas, I didn’t have a phone on me to record the Keystone Cops-style chase as hen-dangling-mouse-in-beak was chased back and forth through the buildings by hens-wanting-mouse.

 

This evening I received a call from the branch manager for Arnold Clark Peterhead, offering me a choice. I could either have them do my next service and MOT at their expense, or I could have a full reimbursement for the Lawrence of Kemnay bill.

Needless to say, I chose the cheque – I won’t have that car much longer and I wouldn’t take any car to Arnold Clark in future anyway!

I need to spend some time with Dancer next week – she’s reached the normal yearling pushy phase and needs gentle instruction in the art of courtesy to humans! This afternoon she tried to barge me because I was grooming Poppy when Dancer wanted my attention, nipped my fingers because they held a brush instead of a treat and then warned George off with a bum-hitch when he looked out of the barn to see what was going on! It wasn’t a proper kick, just a little warning hop, but I’d still rather they didn’t do that to each other – particularly not when I’m in amongst the herd!

I didn’t get as much strimming and mucking out down as I’d hoped, because last night I got some worried texts from my daughter. I had to go down to the village last night because Mum couldn’t remember how to cook her dinner and couldn’t explain to Michelle what was going on. I chucked out the piece of fish Mum had baked twice over (it looked like a piece of wood!) and some boiled-to-death veg and did her some scrambled egg on toast, then suggested she went to bed.

Two hours later Michelle texted to say Mum was back up and getting her breakfast, including all her usual breakfast meds, but she apparently couldn’t remember where to find the milk so put water on her cereal… Michelle replaced that bowlful with one including milk, then kidnapped the meds and succeeded in convincing Mum back to bed again.

This morning she fell out of bed and landed on her head.

First thing this morning, then, I was back down to the village to convince Mum to provide a urine sample, which I took the GP’s surgery. Within an hour, a prescription for 3 days’ of antibiotics was despatched to the chemist, which I picked up at lunchtime, and this evening Michelle and I have supervised Mum taking the first tablet. Since they need to be taken at 12 hour intervals Michelle is guarding all Mum’s meds and will dole them out in the correct amounts at the right times, rather than whatever Mum’s been doing with them recently! Hopefully the antibiotics will kick in quickly and the confusion, even delirium, will reduce.

It’s curious that elderly people can develop urinary infections whose only symptom is that they go total doolally!

I have the kit lists drawn up for the weekend, anyway, and tomorrow should see the preparations here sorted out. Friday morning I’ll just have the ferrets and dogs to get sorted out – then away for the west coast in the afternoon!

I shall miss the horses, I know, but it’s only two nights and a day, after all…

This week is mostly about getting everything ready for next weekend, when I’m leaving other people in charge of the croft for about 48 hours or less.

Sunday’s jump-judging for a local riding club’s one day event went well – only one person had a problem with ‘my’ fence (though, admittedly, she did the job thoroughly – straight off over the horse’s head as he refused, taking the bridle with her. The horse was polite about waiting to be caught and led away and nobody was injured).

Yesterday was mostly wet and windy, which was tedious, but I managed to get a chunk of weeds strimmed down. I got another patch done this evening when I got back from a trip to Aberdeen to help out a friend there, and if the weather forecast is correct about tomorrow, I plan to have at it all day – it’ll be a case of strimming until the battery dies, then mucking out until it recharges. I hope to have all the mucking out caught up on and to get the goose paddock smartened up by the end of things!

The saga of the car continues – the branch manager is now investigating and so is head office, so everyone’s been asking for copies of everything. I’ve managed to refrain from suggest they share…

All the critters are fine and healthy. The chicks have graduated from a plant saucer of food to a hanging feeder, but it doesn’t stop them scratching their bed into their water every morning!

Last night’s rain did bring one unexpected treat – when I went out to shut up the sheds, there was a fine big toad sitting on the doorstep, presumably hunting slugs in the wet grass! I’d say probably an old female from the size – female amphibians tending to be bigger than males – and quite unperturbed by some upstart mammal with a headtorch!

I still hadn’t heard from Arnold Clark by today so I bunged off a stinker of an email to their head office. Lo and behold, I got a phone call late this afternoon from the service manager in Peterhead, he’d had an email from his head office and please could I forward a copy of the work report from Lawrence of Kemnay…

… which I take to mean he had no intention of doing anything until I kicked his bosses to kick him! In all fairness, I wasn’t kind in the email to head office – I put in every detail I could – dates, names, faults underlined and in bold – and I made it fairly clear that I am in no mood to settle for less than full and abject surrender on their part.

I’ve emailed a photo of the invoice to Peterhead and told him the ten-page fault report is available if he wants it, and part of my email to customer services did warn them I expect to have a written apology and the money in my hand within 7 working days, so he’d better get off his backside and do something this time!

Scottish and Southern Energy came to read my electricity meter the other day and I was pleasantly surprised to find today they’ve changed my direct debit amount – they’ve knocked £20 a month off it and plan on reimbursing me £122 of credit within the next ten days! That’ll come in very handy as the horses need their hooves trimming again on the 28th.

I’m gearing up now for two things – one is that I’ve volunteered to act as a cross-country jump judge at a local riding club’s one day event on Sunday, and then next Saturday I’m taking the ferrets to Fort William to represent the Scottish Ferret Club at Lochaber Show. we went two years ago and it was a great day out, so we’re going again this year. It’ll be fun – there should be four of us going with plenty of ferrets each, plus the Club’s secretary with her dozen or so, which means the ferrets will get plenty of time ‘off’ public duties to sleep and play in peace. I’m taking the dogs as well, and then after the show I’m nipping over to Skye to visit my sister. All told I’ll be away from Friday night to Sunday afternoon, but Michelle’s going to come up and house-sit and look after the small animals, and my friend Lynn will be coming in twice a day to look after the horses (George knows and respects her), so I need to write up care sheets to make sure everyone gets the right amount of feed at the right times of day.

After Fort William Lynn’s asked if I could loan my saddles for some test-fitting on a particular low-withered broad, short-backed cob she’s breaking in – she’s trying to find a style of saddle that’ll suit him so she’s borrowing 16 inch saddles off everyone she can think of!

 

I finally have the answers about the mysterious fuel computer data error on my car, and it’s fixed. Every error code cleared, fuel gauge and fuel computer working perfectly again, ready to sell.

Well, when I’ve washed it, anyway!

The cause of the problem was two fuses and a relay which were missing – all of which belonged to the Body Control Module that Arnold Clark replaced back in June. They hadn’t blown, they simply weren’t there. Hadn’t been fitted when they should have been. Nor did Arnold Clark notice they were missing when they had the car back to investigate the problem they’d caused! I asked Lawrence of Kemnay’s mechanics if they thought the absence should have been noticed and they assured me that checking the fuses and relays should have been top of the diagnostic checks for any kind of instrument problem!

I was so angry yesterday I didn’t trust myself to even blog civilly! I have called the Arnold Clark branch in Peterhead and spoken with the service manager there, telling him that the cause of the problem was his team’s incompetence and demanding that Arnold Clark reimburse me for the bill from Lawrence of Kemnay. I gave them the chance to find the problem themselves and they didn’t, denied responsibility and thus I am legally entitled to expect them to cover the cost of the repairs they necessitated.

(After that phone call I spent time hugging the horses to recover my equilibrium. Horses are amazing soul-healers!)

If I haven’t heard back from Arnold Clark by close of play tomorrow, an email will be winging its way to their head office, together with a photo of the itemised bill from Lawrence of Kemnay and if I don’t get the money back from that within a week, it’ll be the small claims court.

And every review site I can find, to make sure their reputation takes a good kicking too.

The horses spent the morning and part of the afternoon indoors, avoiding the rain, but then it cleared up and they were off in search of fresh green grass again, which meant I could get into the shed and spend some time with the chainsaw (I don’t like chainsawing with the horses in – I don’t want to scare them out, and I don’t want them coming to help either!)

The subject of the work was the stack of dead partitions from the stables! I now have a stack of chipboard panels reduced to foot-square chunks ready to go to the tip, and some of the uprights were ok to turn into firewood. There’s a lot more space in the big dairy now, and having cleared the partitions out of the door way I can now get the next hay delivery in easily when it arrives (hopefully tomorrow – they’ve got the last of the hay put out for them tonight!)

If I can clear all the rubbish and rotten wood out of the dairy shed, I shall have a lot more storage room for the winter feed and bedding stacks. I’m also trying to think up a plan to divert the various leaks in the roof into the drains without landing all over the floor, so I can make use of the currently wet, unusable space. It might involve a whole load of cheap tarps strung from the roof and feeding into lengths of drainpipe to the drainage channels – but if it keeps the floor dry, that’ll do!

 

 

It’s wet up here today – horizontal rain and trees streaming out sideways. The horses came in at lunchtime when it started getting bad and have been skirmishing about in the barns ever since.

They were all in the horse barn when I started mixing feeds, so I figured I’d put buckets out on the basis that Poppy, as boss, would be closest to the door and would come through first. I put her bucket and Dancer’s in the stable shed, then went back to pick up George and Abe’s.

George came through. I hurriedly changed plans and plunked his bucket up on the door for him, then galloped past before he blocked the way and got Abe and his bucket out of the way to one side behind George.

Poppy and Dancer arrived. Their buckets were under George’s hooves.

George is a resource-guarding door-kicking rottweiler at feed times.

Very politely, and still standing near Abe on the other side of the stable shed, I asked him if he would mind moving round so I could pick up the buckets under his feet.

He rolled an eye at me and shuffled himself around out of the way, allowing me to go right by his feed bucket to pick up two buckets of feed off the floor by his front hooves. His nose stayed firmly in his bucket, engulfing his feed at utmost gobble-speed as usual. I thanked him very sincerely as I retreated with two buckets of feed and took Poppy and Dancer through to the horse barn to eat. Behind me, George swivelled himself back to his normal eating position, standing exactly where I’d just picked up the buckets.

As far as I know, I made no signals of any kind in my body language. I didn’t use any word he knows.

Pure magic.

I pulled my jaw off the floor and filled some of the hay nets back up while they were eating, and the last one to get re-stuffed was the one that goes in Abe’s old stable. As I carried it back to tie it up, George met me in the doorway. He let me go past and then came round behind me, ears back and antsy as only a fed-up young horse can be, stuck indoors when he’d rather not be and unable to get past a determined older mare to his favourite hay box. That’s a lot of attitude to share a space eighteen feet by ten with! The teeth were snapping, the front hooves were pawing impatiently, and I had to hold a hand up to fend him off as I asked him to wait a moment.

To hang this hay net, I have to reach up to a loop of string above my head, thread the hay net string through the loop, pull it tight, feed the string through a mesh at the bottom of the net, pull it tight and tie a knot. With seventeen hands of impatience demanding my undivided attention and all the treats, right now!!

Thinking back, there is no way I could have asked George to wait just by holding my hand up, palm towards his cheek, and saying ‘wait, please!’ even just a few months ago. Today he gnashed his teeth but they weren’t being gnashed at me, just near me, and although the hoof was pawing the ground, it was the hoof away from me and it wasn’t aimed at me, the ears were back but not pinned and he did wait. He even took a mouthful of hay to pass the time. As soon as I had a hand free, of course, I gave him a treat – several, in fact – because he was waiting. I beat my retreat by gently pushing past his bum in the doorway, too, and I couldn’t have done that without risking a hoof flying out at me until recently, either!

Before the weather got unpleasant, first thing this morning, George and I had a training session at liberty in the yard together, and he consented to lift all four hooves for me just because I asked – without being tied up, without even having a head collar on – and he wouldn’t have done that a few months ago.

It’s been a long haul to get George’s trust and co-operation but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not an oncoming train! Slowly, we’re getting there – and he’s going to be a quite remarkable horse in another year or so, though there’s still going to be a lot more hard work on my part to get there yet! It’s not going to be all sweetness and light overnight – but the flashes of co-operation and communication are getting more frequent and lasting longer, he’s telling me he’s ready to work with me rather than being out-thought into doing what I want, and increasingly he’s less homicidal and angst-ridden and more just a normal idiot three year old.

Tonight I’m just going to celebrate that moment of magic, though. That’s the first time he’s read my mind the way his great-great-grandmother used to and it’s a rare privilege.

All the baby bunnies are of an age now that I’m starting to look for homes for them. I’ve messaged a bloke off a Facebook group who asked about young rabbits a month or so ago, to see if he’s still interested – I’m waiting for a response there. I also answered a post asking for black rex bucks yesterday which led to a mammoth session of inspecting small rabbit underparts, which always leads to being kicked vigorously by understandably unco-operative small rabbits who resent being turned upside down to have said underparts inspected! My wrists look like I had an all-in wrestling bout with a cheese grater. I’m always cautious about the gender of young bunnies, since they’re quite difficult to reliably sex until they’re about 4 or 5 months (after which male genitalia begin to dangle noticibly!) but I seem to have a buck and a doe of Copper and Nightshade’s black babies, so on Saturday the buck is off to a new home with a breeder from Edinburgh.

My hoof trimmer, Odette, has a 5 year old pet doe who recently lost her pal and is interested in rehoming a suitably adult buck to keep her company – I don’t need two bucks for my few does (one buck rabbit can cheerfully keep up with a harem of ten does) so I’ve said she can have either Copper or Dexter, as she likes – they’re both 4 years old, and she’ll neuter whichever she chooses and give him an excellent home for life.

I might keep a particularly feisty little harlie doe from Dottie’s bunch – she’s currently called Blondie, since she has a pale fawn face. She’s the one I chased all over the place yesterday when she got loose during our examinations, so she has bags of  character!

That leaves…. quite a lot of bunnies in search of homes….

Today has been a tale of brilliance and disaster.

First thing this morning George and I explored all his harness together. He still loves putting his head through collars, whether upside down or rightside up. He doesn’t mind having his plough harness draped over him. He’s even fine with me rattling and dragging chains all around him. I didn’t put the hames on his collar but he didn’t turn a hair when I held them up against his shoulders on each side, so maybe tomorrow I’ll drape them over his collar.

No wonder he looks pleased with himself, and he deserves to feel smug because he was superb! (this photo also shows how much of his mane he rubbed out with the sweet itch but it is regrowing and he’s not sensitive to touch on his neck any more, so I’m hoping we’re on top of the allergy problem).

If you’re wondering why the top left of the photo is green, I had a handful of grass to give him and a blade waved in front of the lens at the wrong moment.

This afternoon, however, brought a poultry catastrophe. While I was out, somehow the whippets broke into the office, ripped apart the cage where the two older silkies lived, and devoured the poor creatures. I found one feather, a small bloodstain on the lounge floor and a lot of bedding scattered all over the floor.

The three younger chicks are still ok, on the table.

I’m devastated. The chicks were tame and would step onto my fingers when I offered them my hand, they were as much pets as livestock. I can’t even look at the dogs right now. From now on they won’t be confined in the lounge when I’m out, they’ll be crated securely in my bedroom with the door shut into the bargain.