11 Oct 2004

I am glad to be able to report that Ruby is more or less recovered from her cough and is back on the road at weekends. She is now much slimmer overall and almost looking as though the 21" collar will soon be put away and swopped for the 20" one. But she's still huge compared to "little" Mr T - at 2 inches taller, her girth measurement is an easy 9 inches bigger than his and her hip bones are 4 inches wider! You could say she is well built... strong in the loin.

We are not doing any really serious work as she is now growing thick, harsh winter fur, a proper "brown Fell pony" survival coat. Mr T's coat is always rather velvety, but only Ruby's muzzle is soft; the rest is startlingly hard!

She's going fine in harness and just loves driving out to "have a good neb" at what everyone in the rest of the world is doing. Occcasionally she'll try to sidestep onto a roadside verge in an attempt to stop and eat grass or a tasty looking bush, but needless to say she doesn't get anywhere with this feeble offer to be disobedient. It was a bit disconcerting on Sunday morning though, when she was trotting at 16 kph, to find her developing a little flip of the head (due to sweaty ears) into a full-body shake; or turning her head at 90 degrees to our line of travel in order to peer through a gate as we passed. It's 17 years since we last had a mare on the yard - another Fell, though - so I suppose she's just reminding me that mares, like women, can multi-task :-)

Mr T has decided that his "busty barmaid" girlfriend is perhaps not such a delight as he at first thought. He is distinctly making himself boss of the pair. "I was here first." He warned her off last week when she tried to come up too near the gate as I haltered him to go indoors one nasty stormy evening. Unfortunately, his snapping teeth made contact with ME just behind the elbow - OW! He's never EVER bitten any human deliberately... it was just my bad luck to be in his way when he meant to bite another horse. I let him know that it was not approved of... Ruby, perhaps not surprisingly, lets his scowl drive her off the best hay. I wondered why she didn't retaliate, with that thick coat and superior size and female bossiness, but then remembered that she was brought up as a baby with T's former stablemate who was HORRIBLE to other horses, so probably she believes that an ugly face and flat ears on a little black Fell gelding really mean she will be eaten along with the hay, unless she moves fast to somewhere else.

However, they cannot spend all their lives competing with each other... I notice that since Ruby's arrival, T (previously an inveterate roller in mud, and frequently my despair on winter weekends because he was concreted all over in grey, clayey, hardened yack) has hardly rolled at all, and neither has Ruby. They have had every opportunity to plaster themselves, because the paddock is churned up as never before, but they are not rolling. Presumably, the roll is a solo back-scratch, and when you have a chum who will scratch your itchy bits, you don't need to roll.

Sue in the English Lakes

Intelligence is no defence against one's own stupidity

Back