This time it worked better.

I didn’t put the horses out today – I noticed them all sunbathing in the yard together midmorning, which meant Poppy was in the stable shed, so I popped quietly round, shut the door to Abe’s stable and tied it shut. With Poppy between him and the door, that had George foiled.

As a result, Lynn and I got an hour’s hard graft done without interruptions and not only is the muck heap now much bigger but the horse barn is three quarters clean! Lynn’s coming over again on Monday to give me a hand with another good session, so if I can get some work done each day while they’re eating their feeds, we should be able to call the place properly clean by the end of the month!

He being George and you, in this case, being my old friend Lynn!

The weather was sunny, if with a sharp and lazy wind, so I took advantage of the horses going out while Mum and I visited the nurse (more on that later) and nipped down to shut the gate before they could come back in. I just made it before Poppy realised we were back and came hurtling over, but out they were! I hung a couple of hay nets to keep them occupied and plunged into scraping muck and duck puddles off the yard in peace.

Lynn came round this afternoon to give me a hand with the mucking out, and we were making grand inroads into the stable shed when I happened to glance back from taking the barrow to the heap (again) in time to spot George striding cheerfully into the yard, beaming all over his beautiful big ginger face.

Lynn was in the shed, facing the other way, and an unshod horse is a remarkably quiet critter, even a huge one striding towards you, so I dropped the barrow and yelled the magic phrase: George is behind you!

Lynn has quite a turn of speed. She was out of the shed and the yard in no time, abandoning everything in the process. I went in and retrieved my coat, her phone, the pitchfork, the shovel, the spade and the shavings fork, gave George some treats and petting, and shut the door between the stable shed and the horse barn. I checked how he’d got in and he’d somehow bounced the gate out of its post hole. Given that he’s gone it once, he’ll do it again and I’d like him not to completely demolish the fences, so we decided not to put him back out.

We went up to the horse barn, leaving George happily in the stable shed, and set to work again. Half a dozen barrowloads later, I had to say it again as the ginger giant beamed into view again, delighted to have found us in this new hiding spot.

Lynn legged it again, while I retrieved phone, tools, etc and gave George the cuddles he wanted. I decoyed him back to the stable shed and shut the door again – he bust the bolt on it quite a while ago when Poppy chased him through the (closed) door, so it had just swung open… probably helped by the momentum built up by several hearty belts from a large knee, though he’s also quite capable of just hooking it with his chin!

We managed another few barrows before he appeared again, and this time we gave up. I asked him to reverse far enough from the door for Lynn to summon up her courage and retrieve the barrow so we could close the gate, then I fed him the rest of the nibbles and we retired. We’re going to have another go tomorrow afternoon… I’ll close the yard gate once he’s out, I think, so he has two gates to get past before he can reach us!

Mum’s operation was more than a week ago and we ran out of fresh dressings yesterday, so I got the nurse to check the leg again this morning. The wound is doing fine – healing from the bottom up and the edges in, a healthy colour and no sign of greens or yellows – but there’s a suspicious bit of swelling in the leg and more redness than there should be, so swabs have been sent off for testing and we’re back on four doses of antibiotic a day again, with another appointment on Monday morning.

For all the problems the NHS faces (and, contrary to Westminster propaganda, the Scottish NHS outperforms the rest of the UK in every way!) once the staff here get to grips with an issue, they are regular bulldogs in making sure it’s dealt with properly and thoroughly!

Today has been a day of playing chickens at their own games.

I’ve noticed for the past couple of weeks that I’ve only been getting 3 eggs a day from the nest in the hay store. I looked all around the buildings and couldn’t find anywhere else they might be sitting, so I chalked it down to the storms and moved on.

Today, however, I was watching the horses out in the field (between heaving barrowloads of muck out of the sheds and yard!) and spotted Snowball the silkie fossicking about in the hedge by the road. Luckily, being sparkling white, he is quite easy to spot! The brown hen he was attempting to entice out of the bush, however, was brown and being as inconspicuous as a chicken can be…. suspicious! I made a note of the place and got on with things – I’m not going egg-hunting in the mud under George’s enquiring nose!

The horses came in after a while, however, so I went to take a look. I thought there might be maybe a few eggs…. boy, were there! I came back and fetched a bucket, then retrieved 24 eggs from 2 nests under the old bramble and wild raspberry shoots!

I then had quite a shock when I glanced out of the kitchen window an hour or so later – a chicken legged it past the house and round the trailer with a long white dangling thing in its beak. I know one of the reasons I wanted poultry was because they’d pick up parasites from the horse droppings and help control intestinal worms – but ye gods, what have I been doing to allow a tapeworm a yard long being passed by my horses???

I legged it out of the house in hot pursuit of the chicken. There was some complicated skirmishing around the pampas grass on the lawn, a swift tackle by a different chicken, a smart pass and chicken the second belted off into the orchard with the stolen dangler – but not, thankfully, before I had a chance to see that it was not, in fact, a huge tapeworm but rather a length of clear silicone sealant they’ve managed to find somewhere.

Phew!

I think they passed it around for quite a while before everyone had discovered it wasn’t a worm and it was abandoned as inedible.

We had omelette for dinner.

The whippets have their own couch in the lounge. It was acquired specifically for them (never say the word ‘spoilt’ but…. yeah).

I looked up from the computer this evening and something white caught the corner of my eye… coiled Wicket, furled into a neat little bundle (it’s amazing how small a ball a 17kg whippet can origami herself into when she tries!)….. on Mum’s armchair, in front of the fire!

I called Mum’s attention to this state of affairs (she was at the table at the time) and Wicket rolled her eyes from one of us to the other, lifted her head with a ‘shucks, they noticed’ expression and slunk very slowly off the seat and onto the floor, then crawled under the quilt on their sofa.

Unfortunately I didn’t have the phone within reach to snap a quick pic.

Monday was a GP appointment for Mum to discuss her still-swollen legs, so she’s back on diuretics twice a day again. That also meant blood tests on Thursday to check her kidneys are coping before the diuretics go onto repeat prescription!

Tuesday we were in Aberdeen to see the Dermatology clinic about the growth on her left shin. The doctor there glanced at it briefly, described it as ‘doesn’t look sinister’ and then asked if we could hang around for an hour, until they had a slot free in the operating room to remove it. We duly waited and in due course, fifteen minutes of work by a surgeon under local anaesthetic saw the offending item removed. It seems to be healing well, though we’re keeping a dressing on it for a few more days.

Wednesday was my medical appointment – my annual asthma review. That was no problem – regrettably my peak flow is down somewhat but then again I’m not nearly as active as I should be, thanks to sitting around with Mum so much plus the weather is dire. I shall have to work hard on my fitness… perhaps Mum and I could invest in an exercise bike? She keeps saying she’d like a bike so she can cycle down to the shops – something I very much doubt will ever happen, but at least she could find out how abysmal her fitness levels are and, of course, we can both improve them somewhat! I’ll talk to the doctor about that before we spend any money though, in case it’s inadvisable for her medically.

Also on Wednesday the local social care team came round to discuss things and see how Mum’s settling in. They subsequently sent over the form to get a discount on my Council Tax because of Mum’s dementia, so I won’t have to pay extra Council Tax.

Thursday Michelle was off to Glasgow first thing, flat-hunting ahead of starting her new job there next month. She’s found a place and put the deposit down, so that’s sorted – but between two trips into Aberdeen and back plus running a few errands around the place, I ended up spending 5 hours driving!!

Friday started hectic. Odette came to trim the horses’ hooves at 9.45 and Mum was due at day care at 10, plus the wind was rising! I left her Abe tied up outside the barn, poor boy, while Poppy and Dancer ate hay right in front of him (insensitive!) and George stormed in and out of the field, highly upset that I was busy paying attention to That Grey Thing again instead of himself! I have had (again) The Conversation with him about him needing to share my attention. His response is that he is a one-human-horse and I should be a one-horse-human.

We’ll have that conversation many more times, I can tell.

Abe was apparently, an absolute angel for Odette and she’d nearly finished Poppy by the time I got back, then I popped Abe back in with George and held Dancer who’s much more fidgety than Poppy (of course). We’ve agreed that in future Odette will come later in the day, so next time will be an 11.30 start.

I wonder if I should look for a rider for Abe once he’s backed and ridden away – a school leaver or light adult who’d enjoy hacking him a couple of times a week while I long-rein or ride George alongside? That might settle George’s jealousy down while giving Abe the time and attention he needs, poor lad! The Herd would stay together, of course, but I might find someone local who’s looking for an undemanding couple of days’ light hacking for no cost bar their fuel and time. I’ll keep the idea in the back of my mind and see how things go this summer.

Today Storm Denis is howling around the place. The horses are all in the barn eating hay, though fetching more bales from the farm was interesting! Even my little trailer was tugging on the car when gusts caught it and I only put 4 bales in, not the usual 8, in case the top layer of bales blew off! Fraser, the highly efficient and very nice young farmer who grows the hay, has promised to get another 21 bales to us on Monday even if he has to put them in the back of his pickup rather than on a lorry!

The morning home-help scheme is working well. It takes almost exactly the same amount of time for one of the team to help Mum get washed and dressed as it takes me to run round outside and feed all the critters, plus they give Mum someone else to talk to and she seems to enjoy having them there. It certainly takes a weight off my mind knowing she’s safely occupied while I’m outside, and of course she’s clean every day – something she wouldn’t do for herself or let me help with (even if I wanted! There’s something quite off-putting about the idea of helping your parent wash their privates).

It’s coming up on a couple of weeks since Rhapsody left the Herd, and it’s been interesting watching how the Herd has reacted.

They were a bit quiet and depressed at first. They knew perfectly well that she’d loaded in a box and been driven away, and all of them have travelled in boxes or trailers and know about shifting from one place to another, so I’m certain they’re aware she’s left, not died.

Immediately, though, there were some changes of routine and behaviour. The boys weren’t hanging about at the field gate with Rhapsody in the night – admittedly, I stopped hanging a net of hay up there but they didn’t even go and look. They just stopped going into that corner of the field.

They haven’t been loitering in the orchard – in fact they’ve barely set hoof in the orchard since Rhaps left.

The Herd isn’t splitting up, with some staying out with the old mare while others came in with Poppy – they’re all together, all the time now, and they’ve resumed their quite fixed order of precedence – George leads the way out, followed by Abe, followed by Dancer, while Poppy brings up the rear. They reverse this on the way in – Poppy, then Dancer, then George, then Abe.

There was obviously a lot of behaviour that they adopted simply to include Rhaps into the Herd – and now she’s not there, they’ve stopped doing it. I really hope to have Rhaps back on a visit another time and see what happens when they meet up again! They won’t forget her, that’s for sure.

Having just moved the quail out into their hutch in the yard, I’ve now moved them back into the shed. In a cat carrier, for the night, but I’ll get out there again at dawn or before to organise more space, water and food for them!

It’s just too windy to leave them out – if the hutch blew over and I lost them, I’d have to live with that, so in they’ve gone.

The horses, on the other hand, have taken themselves out. Despite rain coming down like bullets and winds currently estimated at 30-40 mph with gusts to 50… what it is to exercise your free will!

While Mum was in day care yesterday I had a visitor – my old friend Kath came out from Aberdeen on the bus to pay us a visit. We’ve been friend for more than 2 decades now, based on meeting in Uni, baby-sitting for each other and more recently cinema visits and coffee meet-ups, so she brought the coffee and a DVD out to spend the day at the Croft, rather than me trekking into Aberdeen. It was good to see her again – with Mum’s problems I haven’t had time to do more than answer the occasional text for months! – and we caught up on each other’s lives, had lunch, enjoyed the film and then I took Kath back to the bus stop in time to collect Mum from day care.

George was in the yard as we left the croft and his reaction was glorious. He has met Kath before a couple of times and been hugely admired from a respectful few yards away, but he hasn’t seen her in nearly a year now. All the same, it was clear that he vaguely recognised her, because he turned his head first with a quizzical expression, then swivelled himself around to face us and took a step towards her, still looking slightly puzzled but curious – do I know you from somewhere? I think we may have met – and then as she spoke to him his puzzlement turned into a big beaming smile – Oh, I know! It was here! You liked me!…

Horses have fabulous memories and they remember not only what they felt on a previous occasion – but how you felt, too. It’s a good reason for making sure you always leave your horse on a happy note after any session with them! If you leave them thinking you’re cross or unhappy, they’ll be wary when you reappear. I always greet my horses with a happy voice and a treat, and I always leave them the same way – that way they always associate me with cheerfulness, not with darker emotions, and they’re always happy to see me.

The DVD was San Andreas, btw – an enjoyable bit of nonsense involving massive earthquakes and tsunami as background to the marital breakup and reunion of the ever-muscular Dwayne Johnson and wife while he played hero and rescued a nubile daughter from the chaos. As usual I had a few mutter-at-screen episodes as an extremely-amateur geology nut, but sunshine, muscular blokes and a fast paced action script always makes a nice break on a winter’s day.

I was musing on the difference between these two concepts this morning while stuffing hay nets. George was hanging out next to me, for once not booting the partition to demand treats (which meant I had to remember to go give him a treat at regular intervals to reward him for not demanding treats!) so I was talking to him while I worked.

I always talk to any critter I’m near. They may not be listening, but I do it anyway. Horses are pretty good for listening to human blether – my dogs tend to demand conversation rather than letting me ramble.

Anyway, I was thinking about ownership. As far as the law is concerned – and most people, too – I ‘own’ the critters here. They’re property. in legal terms, and I don’t much like that. Taking a sentient creature with opinions and the ability to choose options for themselves and then defining them as ‘property’ is too close to the ‘these people are subhuman and deserve to be slaves’ theme that stains our history as a species.

What, then, is the true nature of the relationship between me and any or all of the other creatures here? I care for them, make sure they have food and water, provide them with safe housing and try to meet their social needs, give them the space they need to move around and choose their company and their occupation – and that, frankly, now goes as much for my mother as it does for the dogs, the chickens or the horses.

It’s very much the same sort of feeling I have for the land on which I currently live. I may own it in legal terms, but I owe a duty of care to this place, and to future generations who may wish to live here – whether human or not. I am not, morally, free to do anything I choose to or with any of the critters, my mother or the land.

Which makes me a guardian, not an owner.

George approves of this. He disapproves of being told what to do – which makes him a very poor slave! – but he’s eager to do interesting things with me… which makes him a very good friend!

In other news, the quail are now in the outside hutch rather than the inside run, which now houses Nightshade and Mistletoe. I put three bricks and a big rock on top of the hutch… with this wind howling in over the weekend, I hope it’s enough!

Not particularly that the lessons were dark – anything but! – merely that it happened last night when I was taking my last look around the critters. In the dark.

I’ll come to that in a minute.

I’ve had a slight break in blogging due to not being home for a couple of days – I was in Perth, getting training from the National Yes Registry in how to use the IndyApp, a fantastic smartphone based communication network designed to allow all the hundreds of autonomous grassroots Independence groups to co-ordinate and share ideas, appeal for equipment or publicise events – without needing some kind of overall national structure.

In the light of a few recent events – the Salmond trial, for instance, which is widely regarded as a show-trial on fake charges by the British Government, designed to discredit the SNP and through them the Indy movement, or today’s resignation of the SNP Finance Minister over his texting exchanges with an underage boy – not having a leader to be shot at is a very good idea. The UK government is perfectly capable of faking charges or exploiting any chink in a rival’s armour and, almost by definition, when you campaign for one country within the United Kingdom to dis-unite and resume independence, you are committing an act of treason against the government of the United Kingdom – just as Gandhi was when he campaigned for India to escape the Empire. It’s increasingly becoming clear to many people in Scotland that the Westminster government hasn’t changed its mindset since the Empire days – Scotland is regarded, like Wales and Ireland, as outlying provinces of an Imperial England, not as fully independent countries which happen to share in a mutually agreed union of equals. This mindset is one reason why it’s advisable to have a lot of autonomous self-organising local groups, rather than a top-down leaders-with-followers structure – though another, far more important, reason is democracy. The Independence movement is democratic, powered by grassroots local groups passionately committed to the cause.

For the record, I have met Alex Salmond and, while I dislike him, I don’t believe he’s committed sexual assault. He’s just not that kind of creep. As for Derek Mackay, at least he’s done the honourable thing and resigned his post. I can think of a lot of Westminster politicians who should have resigned for their misdeeds and didn’t!

Anyway, my daughter stayed at the Croft with Mum and looked after the poultry, Lynn came and looked after the horses and I left the bunnies and ferrets with enough food and water for a week, let alone two days, and all was fine! I’m now (again) starting a campaign to catch up on the mucking out…

Last night, as I was going around checking all the beasties, I came to the quail. I counted them by torchlight, as usual – five little beige birds on a beige shavings background…. and a tiny brown thing. I looked again, more closely. A robin. Sleeping in the quail run.

How did a robin get into the quail run? I have no idea!

Anyway, I lifted the lid and put my hand in, intending rescuing the prisoner and liberating him (or her) somewhere where he’d be able to sleep safely. He gave me an exceedingly alert beady stare, then flew to the other end of the run and hovered.

I know, I know, the only birds that can hover are the hummingbird and the kestrel. We’re all told this ad nauseum. I’ve seen blue tits fly backwards and, trust me, robins can definitely hover superbly!

This one hovered thoughtfully over the quails’ heads, examining the lid at that end of the run. I walked round and he flew back to the first end. Clearly we were not on ‘step into my hand, little bird’ terms! I opened the lid and stepped back, turning my head away so he’d have enough light to see where he was going, but not a spotlight beaming at him and blinding him, and watched sideways as he hovered straight up. Out of the cage. Up to the rafters. His wings made a soft buzzing hum. Ten feet straight up, unhurriedly, under perfect control, and then a delicate landing on the rafter, a couple of feet from the pencilled hamburg hen, who was sleeping up there with Al and one of the brown hybrid hens. I moved to a distance and gave him a respectful salute before leaving, thanking him for the experience.

My help was offered but, politely, turned down – he could do much better without my  hands spoiling his plumage, he just needed the door opened for him. I felt honoured to have seen such a magnificent display of flying skill.

And you know what? That’s all Scotland needs, too – just open the door and let us leave as we choose.