Wow! Has it really been two years??!!!

We are still here, still dedicated to our horsemanship and dogmanship journeys. Lots has happened since we closed the activity centre, we have lost some of the herd and we have got some new members in the pack.

As I write this it feels like another ending - the end of our 2011 Summer. We have had much better weather than forecast and each sunny day feels like we’re cheating mother nature - stealing from next years supply of good days maybe?

Even so there is a definite edge to it that tells me it could go at any second. The golden-green hues of the foliage will overnight become burnt oranges and browns as heavy morning dews are swapped for sharp frosts, and the horses will lumber up the hills to winter grazing, turning their butts to the wind and hunker down for whatever the weather.  The dogs will rise from their benches noses to the North trying to scent out signs of an approaching chill; signalling an end to mind numbing sunbathing and a start to “their time” when their spirits rise in correlation with the falling temperature.

All endings are signals of new beginnings, and for me, that’s a signal of ADVENTURE!!!

We have had lots of adventures in the last two years. Lots of starts, lots of ends and lots of adventures. I doubt I can even remember them all, sadly - I wish I had continually blogged because I will already have forgotten golden moments ( I can thank Brodie for the brain damage and amnesia again).

Where we have been may be interesting to those of you who have visited us over the years and know our place and our herd and pack, but the thing that is really worth hearing about is where we are going - more on that in a minute, first a quick catch up!

After we closed the riding school we put horses back to owners who had loaned them to us or sold them on, keeping 20 or so who were our personal projects or just too settled after traumatic lives to be bothered with settling in somewhere else at that time.

Breeze was sold to our most dedicated student Elizabeth Munro and had a wonderful foal by Gus whom she called Brooke because we thought it was a filly. Ten days later it produced the unmistakable appendages of a colt. I can’t describe the hilarity that caused, not to mention the red faces of the vets. The “e” was dropped and the colt remained Brook although we were tempted to persuade her to change it to Bloke, and really he should have been Broke because in the last year that’s exactly what he has done to every fence in the place.

Foxy is on the West Coast with one of our regular riders who just adored her, her companion Surprise went to terrify small children on a farm in Dornoch. Murphy had a series of loans and ended up back here after doing his “littlest hobo” bit and helping several riders with confidence issues preventing them from enjoying or progressing with their own horses.

Both May and Sugar had dreadful experiences at being loaned - May at the hands of an SSPCA auxilliary and his wife who abandoned her with 4 dead rats in her water, no food, two lame feet, and a headcollar that had eaten into her face. Sugar was taken for 6 months with a view to buy, but after ten months with no real cash turning up I went to recover her, finding to my horror, that she had been utterly neglected with the worst overgrown feet the vet had ever seen, and a fear of being caught. Both those cases had the SSPCA involved to a lesser degree - not enough suffering had actually taken place for it to be worth taking to court apparently. Poor May was put right by us, but in a decision I will regret forever she was put on loan a second time when we were utterly crippled by a dreadful winter that meant we had to get horses moved out of our ice rink of a croft to lower ground. May got laminitis, followed by colic, and was put to sleep the day after Joe and I got engaged. I will never stop missing her.

Our other earth shattering loss happened just after Christmas past when, for the first time ever we had the unpleasant experience of finding a herd member dead in the field. It was Byron, and it must’ve been sudden (less than 12hrs from fighting fit to dead on his side in the middle of a bush). We are not certain, but suspect Atypical Myopathy was the culprit as the pasture ticks all of the boxes and so did he. The last time I saw him he was so full of life, making snow angels and playing porcupine and circling with Bailey in an exceedingly high energy way - but what more do you expect from two left brain extroverts at play? Did he literally play to death? We had got him hacking out on trail rides the summer before he left us and I will be eternally grateful to Catherine Mair for helping me to get him ready for it and riding him or a companion. If I had never had the experience of taking my first ever baby horse round the woods after all those years of raising him then it would have been a much sourer pill to swallow.

Sandy was returned to his owner Sarah Watt who has taken him through the Parelli levels program and is working well at Level 3 currently. To be honest he is unrecognisable as the bampot who needed re-started every spring in his 3 seasons work with us. They recently moved East, and we miss them a great deal too. We had made a lovely little group here of PNH students that got together for regular play and courses, but unfortunately that has fragmented somewhat over time and the younger girls have all grown up, got jobs and boyfriends and horses have sunk onto the back burner for a lot of them. An exception to that is Ella Wingent who has the lovely Shadow on permanent loan, they are in Level 2 of the program and she has recently taken on a new young Welsh D we bought from Gillian Turner as a possible event/pony club prospect. She’ll take him through the levels and compete him for us over the next few years.

Daisy has been sold to Free Spirit Trekking Centre to carry on her good work educating the next generation  of horsey folk. Her son Marley ( who has inherited her floppy lip!) was gelded this year and has been offered to a young Parelli student who is about to go into the wonderful world of horse owning!

The dogs have done well - Trance one of our 2009  litter was most impressive last season, but his sister Pop had most runs and is going to be a great little leader. His sister Ishtar who was sold to one of our volunteers didn’t fair so well after she left here and ended up in a foster home who immediately adopted her and came 12th in their class at Aviemore - not bad after only running for a couple of months. Tal who was also out of that litter and sold was returned a week later. After that Joe and I decided we wouldn’t breed again in the near future and we weren’t going to sell the remaining three pups. Tal never fitted back into the pack so we rehomed him and his 5yr old brother Mambo to mushers Barry and Kelly Wemyss who have given them a superb new start in a racing home where they won’t be so utterly dominated all of the time.

Deet got much worse with his dry eye so we had operations done to attach salivary glands to his eyes to keep them wet. It was pretty successful except it has made him unbelievable ugly and so far has really been affecting his running performance leaving him partially retired.

Ludo’s allergies got worse. 2 endoscopes, 3 more cultures, x-rays, and countless medicines, natural remedies, and diet changes and we aren’t really on top of it leaving him in retirement - although that’s fine by him as he has winters in the house and lives out in the big pen all day.

Bru Bear has been a daddy to two litters now (eight pups in total) and a lot of them are living with friends who are Bear admirers. We have one of his first daughters, Juno, she’s a lot of work yet filled with potential. Ideally she should have been a Police dog I think, and I desperately wish we were closer to a Schutzhund club than 200 miles as she’d have excelled at that. Instead she just spends her day policing the rest of our pack. Bru and his wife are due to have a dirty weekend again in the next couple of months.

Right now we are on the brink of one of our biggest adventures yet. I am pregnant, due Jan 2012, and so fat it’s almost unbearable! I have had to think carefully about how I am going to manage the projects on the croft and the care of the animals, and we are making some fairly huge changes accordingly. Although things are about to get tougher than ever before I have never  felt more determined or closer to getting what I want.

Our Parelli group has seeds of hope with a few older ladies joining in.  It has changed the dynamic of the group quite a bit as most of them have their own set up and horses, but issues with transport. We are seeing a trend towards playing and lessons away from Highland Wildrides and shared at individuals homes which may mean more people becoming interested in starting. Hopefully they will still enjoy the idea of courses in the future but all plans for those are off for the next year.

We are not going to downsize much on the dog front, but we are going to try very hard to continue with the past two years of work, and match our horses up with their perfect partners. So far it is looking more promising right now than at any point previously as I have networked over the year with lots of other lovely natural homes who may have openings in their herds. We have also decided that, as the winters in the past two years have prevented livery owners getting to us, that it will be easier this winter when I am heavily pregnant, to put all the liveries off for the time being. It will be so sad to see Liz and Breeze and Gill and Magnum less but we know they are all moving onto a new beginning and adventure too.

So stay tuned for more updates and info, stories and course notes as time progresses. Remember that we will be more than happy to have our followers join us on adventures when you can.

This entry was posted on 26/08/2011 at 06:07 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.