Rain!

I was so glad to see some rain yesterday. It cooled the air, kept some of the flies away, softened the ground, got some moisture on BG’s hooves and will hopefully help the grass to grow.

Our field has not really recovered from winter. The farrier described it as a desert. The vet, after sedating BG, said she shouldn’t eat for half an hour, then took one look at our grazing and said that I’d probably be fine to turn her out in our field though. The ponies are all doing quite well on it though, I need to get some weight off BG and P2’s owner said he needs to loose some too. The only one doing okay is P1 who is exercised the most but never seems to have to worry about his weight.

I would love to fence off a section of the field to let it recover. We have tried this in the past but it doesn’t work. P1 has a fantastic jump on him, and he will always get into the section of the field that is fenced off. Normally he jumps cleanly, but sometimes he will bring some of the fence down, and then they all get through and the fencing needs sorting out. P2 also walks under the fence and it doesn’t seem to make any difference if it is electrocuted or not. I am very lucky, BG behaves herself and stays where she should be, but that doesn’t help much when she is in with the other two.

BG was stood by the gate as we arrived last night, with P1 and his owners. I thought I would catch BG straight away but she took one look at me as if to say ‘you haven’t had time to make my tea yet why would I want to be caught’, and then turned her back and trotted up the field to scare P2 away. I followed thinking ‘oh no, this will be a forty minute job to catch her tonight’, but she stood there, stepping back a little bit a couple of times, and let me catch her.

She had an easy night of it. Once I had sorted her out and picked out her hooves (first time I have had to do that for a while, the ground is so dry they have been clean for weeks) I just did a little bit of in-hand with her, leading her over some poles.