The day started with me sleeping in – I didn’t get up until gone 7am! Still, the horses were good about going out and already Poppy seems to feel she more or less has the boys under her hoof and only needs a little posturing to maintain her position.

Poor George, he knows he’s normally much admired when he arches his neck and power-trots around the field, but Poppy just wasn’t impressed!

I went down to see about bunnies and ferrets after the horses were out and we disassembled the other ferret cage. It’s now reassembled in the ferret room, aka the small bedroom, and the ferrets will be installed in it later tonight. I will take pix of them when they’re there – in the meantime here’s Angus, Marley and the girls in their favourite hammock this morning:

This evening the wind is getting up and George, being unfamiliar with the various things that flap and make noises on the croft, decided spooking would be an appropriate reaction….. to everything! I got him into the little paddock between the field and the gate, then Abe refused to go with him, so George spooked back into the field. Two minutes later he spooked back into the paddock! I put Abe’s headcollar on and led him into the paddock in time for George to trot back out, then he turned round and came hurriedly back in, so I closed the field gap and set about getting George’s headcollar on.

It’s one thing to get a headcollar on a horse that big when he stands calmly and obligingly inserts his nose into the thing for you, but trying to lasso his ears when he had his head up and was jumping at the slightest movement or noise made for an exciting five minutes. On about the fifth try, we got it between us and I opened the gate, leading George through it. Abe followed and promptly made for the nearest tuft of fresh green grass, so I closed the gate securely and caught Abe, led the two boys into the stables and put George in his box, closed the door and then tied Abe up outside George’s stable, so they could still see and touch each other.

Poppy started shouting in the field, echoed by Dancer, and both lads yelled back! I hurried back to collect them, got Poppy into her headcollar and trusted Dancer to follow (she did). I got Poppy into Abe’s stable – but Dancer had just seen Abe tied up and wanted to go talk to her friend, so Poppy turned round and was about to come out again when I grabbed her headcollar again! I really don’t think Poppy have a go at Abe when he’s tied up would be a good thing. Dancer followed Poppy on the second try, however, and I got them both into the barn, shut the door behind them, collected Abe and got him in his stable, then fed everyone and heaved a big sigh of relief!

The sooner they all settle properly and can share the barn amicably, the better!

Tomorrow, hopefully, we’ll get the quail up to the croft. I still haven’t figured out how to get the rabbits moved over, given Blue’s wrecked two hutches and left us without enough hutches to go round!

George Skinner delivered my handsome hunk of a lad back to me this morning. George (the Horse) was good in the trailer, apparently, and unloaded calmly, though he then circled around me several times while trying to stare in every direction at once, taking in this strange new place. I popped him in Poppy and Dancer’s big space in the barn for a while to let him stretch his legs and settle, but Abe had spotted his pal and kept shouting, which was winding George up a bit as he answered, so before long I decided the best thing to do was turn George out and let them start getting to know each other. Mr. Skinner had a look to see how George was settling in, then told me he’ll be a grand worker when he’s old enough, but just to let him take things at his own pace until he’s ready – which was my plan, anyway! – and took himself off again.

Abe and George might have been glad to see each other again but the same couldn’t be said for Poppy! She’s barely put that grey job in his place and here’s a bigger red version to be got under the stern maternal hoof and kept away from her precious foal.

The moment I let George into the field, she set about the job with vigour.

That extraordinary noise you can hear on the video towards the end – the one that sounds like a passing angry lion – is Poppy, snorting! She kept it up for a good five or ten minutes after I’d stopped filming, but then they slowly settled. By the time they came in tonight, George was only getting ugly looks and the occasional head-waving to move him along out of Poppy’s vicinity – but it worked! She only has to lay her ears back and shake her head at him, even from half the paddock away, and he scoots hurriedly for distance!

Lynn stopped by this evening, just in time to give me a hand bringing them in. That was just as well, too – I went in with armfuls of headcollars, hoping to get Poppy and Dancer first, and ended up with George, Abe and Dancer, with Poppy glaring furiously over her foal in case anyone took liberties. That’s a bit of a nervous spot for a mere small human to be in! I took George in first, before Poppy tried to eat him, and he was quite worried about being left in a strange stable by himself. I stayed with him and soothed his nerves until Lynn brought the others in, but once George had Abe within nose-bumping range again he settled down and decided maybe the stable was alright after all.

The vet was due out this afternoon to give George his next flu jab but was slightly delayed by getting lost on the way! It’s all the funnier given that apparently his parents own a farm just up the road, the other side of White Cow Wood! Still, Graeme was pleased to see George looking well, since he last saw George doped to the ears when he had his teeth rasped, and George was very well-behaved about getting his jab, so all was well.

I went down to Hereford to visit friends and pick up my caravan, which has been in winter storage there, on Tuesday. Wednesday I collected the caravan without trouble, helped with some gardening – including scrubbing the algae out of a lovely flowform water feature and tossing wildflower seeds onto a moor-hen nesting raft in the pond – and then, once the rush hour was safely over, I set out on the homeward journey.

Not far from Hereford I started seeing mist drifting around the landscape, but when I reached the Severn Valley by Shrewsbury, it turned into outright peasouper fog.

It stayed as various thicknesses of peasoup all the way to Glasgow, lightened to merely mildly foggy from there on and was still a heavy mist when I got back to Cairnorchies! As a result, the journey took 13 hours (including an hour and a half in Hamilton Services’ carpark when I caught myself microsleeping at the wheel and parked up for a kip) and left me utterly wrung out this morning. Quite a bit of the journey I spent insinuated into slow-moving HGV convoys, since the back end of a caravan is almost perfectly fog-coloured and blocks out the high intensity lights on the car superbly, but when even the HGVs are doing 30mph convoys up the M6 you know it’s serious!

I got the caravan turned round (7 point turn in the yard!) and unhitched, then went to see the horses. Abe was delighted to receive his morning carrot and the girls whinnied gladly at the sight of their breakfast bucket, so I got them out, let the geese out, then went down to my mother’s to collect the dogs and some ferret food. While I was there, I fed the other ferrets and the rabbits, then sat down for a cup of tea.

I started nodding off over the tea, so I decided I’d take the dogs back up to Cairnorchies, do the ferrets there and put my head down for a few hours.

Somehow it didn’t happen. I remembered after the ferrets that I needed to clear out the caravan, which has at least stocked up the kitchen and bathroom on cleaning stuff, and since I was then on my feet and in the yard anyway, I carried on and mucked out. By the time I’d done that, had a sandwich and another mug of tea and tracked down the dogs (Wicket had somehow managed to get shut in with the ferrets!) it was time to go over to Strathorn to collect all George’s stuff and bring it back, since he’s coming home tomorrow morning. I packed the dogs into the car, dropped them at Mum’s again, had a quick cuppa, got the electric chainsaw out of the shed, topped off the battery and read the manual again quickly to refresh my memory, then put the saw in the car and headed off to Strathorn.

George was tied up there, since for unknown reasons he’d come in damp and sweaty and very full of himself so needed to cool off under supervision before being left in his stable for the night, so I got to see him again. I’m sure he’s grown even more!

Car duly packed with rug, buckets, harness, etc, I came back to Cairnorchies in time to meet Lynn there (she was dropping off a fleece rug of Poppy’s I’d overlooked when I left Denmore, together with a card and the proceeds of a whip-round from the other liveries there). After that I brought the geese in, then the horses, fed them all, cleared those last three timbers out of George’s stable so he just needs his bed down in the morning, and then decided I’d sleep in the village tonight…. the dogs can be in their crates, there’s central heating that works and that means I can get an early night followed by a full night’s undisturbed sleep and be refreshed and revitalised when I get up tomorrow! George should arrive before 11, the vet’s coming to give him a flu jab at 4, I have to get his bed down and water filled, sort out where to put his hay (nowhere near his water!!!) and I’m definitely going to need my sleep tonight….!

It’s not all slog and hard labour at Cairnorchies. I’ve mostly been talking about that at the moment because there’s been such a lot of it, but there are major compensations by way of scenery!

This was yesterday morning, just about dawn, looking east over the fields as the sun burned the morning’s frost off the field as a low, dense silver fog.

I only had to turn my head slightly in a southerly direction and there was another gorgeous silver-smoke special effect on offer:

 

This evening I sat on the yard wall with the dogs watching an irate peregrine (I think!) dive-bombing a buzzard in the ploughed field, while the buzzard mantled over whatever she’d caught – alas, too far away for the phone to have a hope of catching anything! I think probably a female buzzard from the size – female birds of prey are usually larger than males and this looked like a big ‘un. Larks sing overhead all day, I have starlings making amazing African metallic noises on the shed roofs, there’s at least one tawny owl in the woods at night, I came nose-to-beak with an equally startled blue tit by the holly tree the other day… yesterday a big flock of wood pigeons went over, so low (and the area so quiet!) that I could hear the air whip in their feathers.

And then, from time to time, there’s the view from the kitchen window!

Dancer lying down on the left, Abe lying down on the right, poor Poppy, who never seems to get a break (welcome to parenthood….) in the middle standing guard while the youngsters snooze in the sun. The woodland in the background, by the way, is home to a bronze-age recumbent stone circle, which the dogs and I plan to visit soon after I get home, when all the horses are settled together!

I spent this morning getting everything ready for a couple of days away – ferrets cleaned out, horses ditto, geese as well, all pots washed and used teabags cleared out onto the muckheap. Longleys (our local feed merchants) delivered a pallet-load of hay bales, so there’s enough food for the horses.

By 2.30 I’d packed my bag, dealt with the caravan park people to make sure my caravan will be ready to pick up on Wednesday, and thought, what about George’s stable? He’ll be home on Friday and the stable I want him to have is currently two half-size stables – and on Thursday I have a million other things that need doing.

Of course, the sledgehammer handle broke yesterday and I was a little daunted by the thought of trying to dismantle the partition without a sledge, but then again I’d just read an irritating Facebook post and, rather than answer it immediately, hitting something repeatedly first would be a much better idea.

This is the partition in question, with a hammer for scale:

High, wide and handsome, as they say!

Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I looked to see which side the nails had been knocked in from, then walked round the other side with my hammer and started bashing one end of the top bar as hard as I could.

After quite a bit of bashing, I had the top section loose at both ends. A bit more whacking and the whole top piece was loose, then (naturally) it fell off and landed on one of my feet.

I gave my vocabulary of invective a sound work-out for five minutes while limping in small circles wondering if I’d broken anything. Still, this was a third of the partition knocked out, which was a pretty good first step!

The construction of these partitions is four solid lengths of two by four with heavy floor panels nailed on each side. I could also see that while the top bar hadn’t been supporting anything else, the other three were all supporting the crossbars for the front of the stable, which I don’t want to disturb – when George arrives I need to be able to shut him in safely at night!

I’ll have to chainsaw the remaining cross pieces out on Thursday, but the panels…. they’re heavy things and if I could get them off, it would make life a lot easier. I tried the claw side of the hammer, which produced a small amount of movement…. but nowhere near enough. If only I had a crowbar….

I went rooting through the rubbish left by the previous owners and came up with something that, while not a crowbar, is certainly a very good lever.

If you’re not familar with the construction of a traditional cow byre, this is the upright stanchion to which the neck chain for the cow is attached. It’s about 18 inches long and made of wrought iron, with a couple of useful bends at the ends. As a crowbar, it’s actually not a bad substitute!

I set to work with hammer and cow tie bar; first use the claw side of the hammer to open a small space, then wedge the cow tie bar into it and lever like anything. Slowly and reluctantly, nail by nail, the first panel came free.

I jumped well back when it started falling, as you can imagine!

Four more panels followed, and on Thursday I just have to chain saw through those last three bars and we’re done!

 

 

This time the gate for the field so that little varmint Dancer can’t just frolic out at will!

It took a while to get the holes for the hinges drilled – the augur bit had the length for the gate post, but then I had to expand the holes with a wider, shorter bit to get the hinge pins through. At least with the augur’s initial hole to follow, I didn’t have any trouble getting the ends of my holes to meet up in the middle! Once that was done, though, it was a simple matter to hammer the hinge pins in to the same depth top and bottom, screw up the nuts on the back of the post tightly and then I hefted while Mum steered and we got the gate up on the gate post. It swings freely, despite the weight – I had to drag it across the yard so I know it’s heavy! – and it’s a full-height five-bar gate, so the horses will stay the other side of it properly.

We also got the posts back up for the last bit of goose fence, so the geese are now secure too.

I must say that goose-herding is proving a singularly non-stressful thing; both last night and tonight I simply wandered up behind the geese saying things like ‘time for bed! Go to bed! Good geese!’ and they waddled off to their bed without hesitation! They waddled quietly out this morning and trundled round to the grass without any dithering, too.

I’ve posted adverts for my horse trailer – it’s an expensive bit of kit that only gets used once or twice in a year, so better to sell it before it deteriorates and put the cash towards something more important, like more fencing!

We do have one small problem…. while bashing the posts into the ground for the goose fence, the sledgehammer handle broke, so I’m now wondering how I’m going to get the partition down between two stables to make a big enough stable for George….

I got a call last night from my friend Righa to say she’d like to bring the geese over today, so I was up at sparrowfart to get their fencing finished off. I’ve repurposed that security fence panel as part of the goose run fence now, which is (to my mind) a useful bit of recycling, though I still have to get the fence up at the field end of the goose run. All the same, we decanted Hannibal (gander) and Lucy (goose) into their new home and after some honking and hiding in corners, they found the grass and settled to a quiet day of exploring, honking a little and nibbling the grass.

Hannibal on the left – he’s quite a well-mannered gander, not too aggressive, though of course since he doesn’t know me he did hiss at me a few times tonight. They came in as the light faded – I herded them gently round to their bed and shut them in with a dish of water for them to wash their beaks and drink, into which I then dropped a big handful of mixed corn, which they’ll enjoy picking out. Hannibal certainly went straight in to dibble for it, though Lucy was a little more shy and waited until I left.

I’m also rethinking the field fences, since Dancer made mincemeat of my last attempt! I made the mistake of bringing Abe in first last night, so Dancer ducked under the electric fence gate, under the spring beyond that and cavorted halfway across the yard before realising Poppy was still in the field – so she went back into the field. I hurriedly dashed poor Abe in and tied him up (he shouted some fairly rude things about this cavalier treatment!) then went back to collect Poppy and Dancer, only to be met by Dancer just coming through the spring gate again – this time head-up, so it was stretched almost straight and, of course, is now ruined as a spring. It snapped off the catches at that point, which it’s designed to do, and she dashed back into the field. It took me another five minutes to catch Poppy, who was moderately hysterical about her foal running off without her (not helped by the continuing diatribe from Abe) and Dancer wasn’t having any of her head collar, thank you kindly! In the end I gave up on trying to catch her and just led Poppy across the yard at the fastest pace I could (my sprint these days being about a medium trot for an Arab!) so Dancer followed her mum safely into the stable.

Phew! Once they were in and door shut, I rescued Abe and put him in his stable after them.

Today I finished disentangling the north paddock gate, which is the right size for the field gateway as well, and my poor mother trekked over half the county looking for gate hinges to fit. We now have them, I’ve brought the big augur bit up and tomorrow morning I’ll drill the holes for the bolts and get a proper five-bar field gate up in the space. Dancer won’t duck through that!

I made sure I took the bag of nuggets out with me at bringing-in time tonight and gave all the little rascals a suitable reward for allowing me to put head collars on them. Poppy and Dancer came in first, then Abe followed – though Abe got his own back for all the trouble Dancer’s been getting him into with Poppy by waiting until I had Poppy on a lead rope and then herding Dancer away quite deliberately, though politely enough! Eventually I shouted enough rude things at him and he let the foal come over to get her headcollar on, though it still took a little manoeuvring to get the girls out of the paddock without Abe’s company!

I think when George comes back I’d better have them in two paddocks again until we’ve got the order of precedence sorted out! It’s bad enough wrestling three horses – add in a fourth and I run too short of hands and nerves!

I should also say that the horses have seen the geese (and heard them) and they are seriously impressed with the size of the seagulls round here (those being the only other white birds they’ve seen to date). I had to laugh when they ran off to the other side of the paddock then turned to stare in amazement…. then Poppy chased Abe over to investigate. Clearly the young male is expendable! To his credit, Abe investigated quite bravely and reported back that all was safe, and since then they’ve hardly twitched an ear at the honking.

I had another set of visitors this afternoon – Ceilidh’s owner Lindsay came to see round, and brought with her a housewarming present.

I’ll let it settle for a day or two before I plug it in, of course, but I have a fridge!

I also have a sofa – I spotted an absolute bargain on gumtree yesterday, a leather 2-seater sofa for just £20 in the village 2 miles away. Mum and I shot round last night with the horse trailer (I’ve washed it thoroughly since Poppy and Dancer used it!) and snaffled the sofa. The dogs are thrilled, though there’s just enough room for me as well.

I’ll get a photo of it in daylight tomorrow.

You might notice in the photo of the fridge that there’s a passport on the worktop. The ferrets found it behind a radiator and helpfully scrabbled it out! I’ve no idea who Michael Smith is, but his passport expired in 2008. I’ll pop it in the post to the Passport Office at some point and let them deal with it.

This is going to be a recurring topic, given the state of the fencing at Cairnorchies!

I had a spot of independent thought and action from Dancer at bringing in time yesterday, so today I rigged up a deflection device to steer loose horses away from the road; it’s a simple thing, just a length of electric fence wire (unconnected) tied around a drainpipe on the corner of the stable and stretched to a spring gate that hooks onto the field boundary fence near the gateway there. It steers horses towards the stable entrance rather than the road, anyway!

I’ve added another spring gate between there and the paddock gate itself, in case I have to let a horse out of the paddock but don’t want them getting ahead of me to far – effectively there’s now an extra small paddock between the main grazing and the yard.

Tomorrow we’re going to double the size of the grazing paddock – I’ve removed the old tatty electric wire from the road side boundary fence and run a nice visible new white wire through the insulators, so tomorrow morning we need to dismantle the internal boundary fence between Abe’s small paddock and Poppy’s bigger one, the stakes from which I can then use to complete the new fence line. It should give the three of them about an acre to scamper about in, which will keep them in cavorting space for a while.

I’ve also made a start on dismantling the gate into the north paddock, which is a fabulous hodge-podge of every technique of fence-bodging known to the fertile imagination of the smallholder – admittedly, I’ve used them all myself in the past, but never all at once on the same gate! I’ve managed to detach the 8-foot-high security fence panel from the back of the field gate, and extracted the two shopping baskets and several odd pieces of wire grid used to fill in bits, but I’m still working on the chicken wire.

Finally, I got round at last to uprooting enough of the garden fence to realign it and hook it up to the field fence, so I’ll be able to confine the geese at that end of the garden. I still need to finish off the other end and patch a couple of holes in the boundary fence, but we’re getting there.

After that, I took the afternoon off to go and visit George. He’s fine and will be coming home on the 1st March!

After all yesterday’s high drama with low-flying foals and non-stop drum tattoos being played in transit, today was planned as a quiet day of pottering around, making sure the horses settle in together and so on.

I started off by turning Abe out while Poppy and Dancer ate their breakfasts and then started to rearrange the electric fence. That was a mistake! Abe followed me round the paddock as I wound up the lower electric line and then stuck his head under it to see what was going on (luckily it wasn’t turned on, of course!), hooked his ears in it, jumped out again and got it round his neck in the process and then left the neghbourhood at a smart canter, trailing wire, stakes and passing dock stalks in his wake. I just avoided him getting the wire around my ankles, thankfully, and then chased after him hurriedly.

Halfway across the field he successfully bucked his way out of the wire and turned very firmly at a good extended trot towards the sheds. I couldn’t catch up before he was out and in the yard, where he dropped to a walk and headed towards the road.

Thankfully, he responded to my frantic calls and turned back, making his way to his stable and waiting there for me to open the door for him. The general impression was definitely, I’ll wait here until you’ve put everything right, thank you!!’

I shut him in and went back. Four smashed stakes, half a dozen uprooted and the wire in a fabulously complex arrangement of horse-knitting (even more complex and twisted than the kitten version). It could have been much worse – I had visions of him on the road, me dragged after him by an ankle down the field… never again! Fence rearrangements take place without his help in future.

Once I’d sorted everything out and made two paddocks, however, I went back and turned him out into the smaller, far paddock, then brought Poppy and Dancer out and put them in the nearer paddock. There was a little excited prancing by the blonde babe, Dancer, but Poppy inspected the fence, inspected the water, sniffed the lick with a disapproving sort of expression and then settled down to graze. Abe was grazing peacefully in his paddock, with half an ear on the foal, so Dancer pranced a little longer by herself and then settled to grazing as well.

It was clear the excitement was over for the morning, so I dropped the dogs off at Mum’s, did the bunnies and ferrets, then came back. All was still calm and peaceful.

 

I mucked out, then prepared the day’s feeds and paused for a spot of early lunch.

As I was waiting for the kettle to boil, Poppy suddenly trotted through my field of vision in the field, looking upset. I stepped outside to be greeted by a fusillade of gunfire (proof the double glazing is doing its job, anyway!) and all three horses gazing across the road at the hill to our west, which was where the noise was coming from.

It’s a country area and farmers are bound to take a gun out for pigeons and crows and so forth from time to time, so they’d better get used the noise, I felt. I shoot myself (though not around the horses) so I’m not going to gripe about the occasional noisy few hours in the neighbourhood. I wandered along to stand with them, since Poppy was still looking quite worried, and explained the normal state of affairs in farming areas where farmers tend to be quite loudly violent about the kinds of pests who uproot seedlings or decimate lambing flocks (I have to say, none of them appeared to be paying any attention to me).

Poppy was, however, paying attention to Abe. She’d gone over to stand as near him as she could for the fence between the paddocks, and kept stealing little glances at him. He stood looking handsome, alert and calm, which seemed to keep her calm. Dancer was watching them both, standing between them. After a few more episodes of semiautomatic shotgun volleys (judging by the sound and rapidity – unless there were dozens of shooters) Abe yawned and lay down for a snooze, and both Poppy and Dancer lost all interest in the noise.

Clearly if Abe thinks there’s no problem, the girls do too.

I’ve been aware for some time that Poppy is only too happy to let anyone else (Ceilidh, until now) be her lead mare, but apparently this includes a much younger gelding she’s not had direct contact with before! As far as being matriarch of the herd is concerned, it looks like Abe’s elected – at least until George gets back!

I popped over to Denmore for a last time in the afternoon to pick up the spare keys for the trailer and drop off the haynet I’d made off with yesterday (it was in the trailer for Poppy’s benefit) and came back via Harbro to pick up a shavings fork, which should save my back during the mucking out, and a sack of magnesium oxide, which Poppy gets to improve her hooves and avoid any recurrence of laminitis. The horses watched me drive in by the house with a sort of detached ‘oh… it’s her again’ attitude, and came in just after four tonight – Poppy and Dancer snorting at all these strange things along the way and then Abe came in on a second trip to the paddocks, shouting for his herd until he got to his stable and could see them again.

When I did the bunnies last night there was a small harlequin bundle of fluff sitting by Dexter’s cage. The colours don’t really show up in the photo I hurriedly took, but after a bit I gave it a little stroke, even picked it up for a moment – and then it realised I was not Blue or Copper and made hurriedly off after Blue. There was no sign of little fluffy bundles tonight, but we now know Blue had at least three kits.

I followed a suggestion to contact a local Natural Horsemanship trainer last week and, as a result, Fiona MacKinnon from Belhagan Equestrian Centre came over this morning and we spent two and a half hours getting Dancer into the trailer.

Poppy was an absolute saint through this palaver – she stood in the trailer the whole time, patiently, with only the occasional mouthful of hay and frequent glances backwards to see what antic Dancer was trying next, and me holding her, scratching her withers and shoulders, and telling her she was a marvel!

Dancer tried rearing, bucking, running away, leaping sideways, backing, pawing, even a sneaky nip! Patiently Fiona kept bringing her back to face the ramp, the slightest movement towards the ramp praised and rewarded with nose-rubs, face-scratches and soft words, and eventually a hoof touched the ramp. It was instantly snatched away, of course, but gradually it was put back on the ramp more often, then the other joined it, then a third, finally a fourth. There was nearly as much backwards and tantrums as fowards, but finally she made the final leap up into the trailer, crashed into her mother and stood trembling while being made much of, then I nipped around and shut ramps and top doors.

I might say that wasn’t the end of Dancer’s displeasure with the whole thing – she kicked non-stop the whole way over to Cairnorchies, a ride of some fifteen minutes (I  took the trailer round a longer but smoother route than the shortest, which also means more left hand turns and avoids having to turn right after a nearly-blind bend on a fast road near the end!) but we got there safely despite my concerns – was she kicking in fear? Rage? Because she’d fallen and was trying to get back up? The imagination goes into overdrive!

Abe saw the trailer turn in and immediately started shouting at the top of his lungs, which made Poppy call back, and by the time I’d got a sweat-drenched mare and foal into the barn, Abe was dancing at the gate, frantic to see another horse close up again at last. I brought him in and he stood in his stable staring over the door into the barn for nearly an hour:

The other end was intent and hoping desperately for a kind word from the newcomers:

Poppy and Dancer weren’t so bothered about him, though. They first headed for the water bucket and drained that, then Poppy found the hay and allowed Dancer to have a drink of milk, and they settled in quietly together.

I expect they’ll venture over and sniff noses with Abe through the night – tomorrow they’ll be going out together and I have every expectation of Poppy giving Abe a good seeing-to if he tries to sneak up on her foal, but they all know Horse perfectly well, they’ll work it out and by tomorrow night they might well all be in the barn – or it could take a few days longer. Abe’s young enough to play with the foal, which is better for her, too. I may need to make the paddock larger, though!

It’s saved me the twice-daily trip up to North Denmore to see to Poppy and Dancer, anyway, and they’ll all be out from sun-up to sun-down from now on, so feed bills should be much lower too.

I’m going over to see George on Thursday this week, hopefully – they think they’ll have done all they need to with him by the end of next week and I want to see how they’re working with him so I can carry on with what works!