The vet came on Wednesday to scan the girls, only to find that Alfama had a particularly ripe follicle necessitating that we got her in for AI at our earliest convenience. As a result I took a couple of days off and arranged to take her and Gualter in on Thursday. It took a bit of convincing to get Gualter on the trailer and judging by the way he leapt up into it I believe his issue to be that he doesn't want to step on the ramp. It was quite a sight seeing a gazelle-like leaping colt heading straight for me, but he managed to miss both me and the ramp, at which feat I was personally very impressed.
On arrival at the vets we took them straight into the barn for Alfama to be scanned again. This was particularly intersting to me because although the girls have been scanned many times this season, it was the first time that I've been on hand to see what a ripe-ish follicle looks like. We turned them out in what might now be considered their usual paddock, and drove back home. Most of the rest of the afternoon was taken up transferring wood to the new wood pile and taking the dogs for a long walk. By the time I'd finished I was too battered to ride - I really should learn to ride first then do other jobs afterwards, because thinking "oh I'll just..." really Does Not Work. In the evening we had a chap round to discuss some land matters, at which point T decided to put on a show for him involving flat gallops, caprioles, pings, star jumps and flirting displays to the mares, and I'm really not sure whether it was T or I who were the most surprised that the chap took No Notice Whatosver. Funny.
We had a very busy day on Friday, cleaning up the garden, putting the roof on the wood pile (involving standing on tip toe on top of a ladder, banging nails into onduline sheets at precarious angles) etc etc. Knickers went off to do some stuff with a friend at 2ish so all that remained for me was to work both boys, hump more wood and walk the dogs, what with Sid pulling 16+ hour days and being effectively welded to his laptop. It was the first time the dogs had been out with only one of us and, aside from the incident with the rotten rabbit's head that Frankie was particularly wanting to protect at all costs, it went really well and they were very manageable on the lead. Interesting that they stayed closer and were more attentive than when there are two of us out walking them.
Saturday was also extremely busy. Pheel had called a couple of days before to see if we wanted enough rubber matting to fit out all the stables at a very good price (yes please), which necessitated being round to his with the trailer for 8am to follow him to the place where we were to get the rubber, waiting while his boys loaded the trailer then driving back and unloading it into one of the stables. For anyone out there that has never unloaded a trailer full of heavy duty rubber matting, I can tell you that it is bloody heavy, and hard work. One trailer load done, I went back to collect the second load, return and repeat in between a visit from Tessa; chiropractor, adviser on all things vegetable garden, dogs and all round good egg. I can advise that unloading two trailer loads of heavy duty rubber matting is even harder work than doing one. And it had to be done, because I gave Xacra her prostaglandin injection on Wednesday evening and we had to take her to the vets that afternoon, so we needed the trailer.
So with no pause for anything so civilsed as a break, we loaded up Xacra and Golfinho and undertook the hour's drive to the vets to drop her off. Again we took her straight to the stocks to be scanned (follicle not developed enough) while Golfinho took the opportunity to investigate everything, knock things over and generally cause a ruckus. Our little herd were reunited with much nickering in the paddock while we did the necessary paperwork, then loaded up Alfama and Gualter for the journey home. Very pleased that Gualter loaded much better this time, and even deigned to put foot to ramp, if only for milliseconds before clattering into the trailer at speed. Another hour back home, by which point it was about 4:30. Ordinarily we'd have had a lighter evening of it but had invited our excellent neighbours round for a barbie and had all the preps to do, so there followed a period frenetic activity to get it all done, and we were just back on top of things as they arrived (phew). Had a really lovely evening which was much more civilised than our last get together, when we all got completely battered on the last of our sloe gin and spent the evening dancing wildly on their lawn.
All of that was the good stuff, but the bad news is that we lost one of the goats, Gerry, on Saturday night :(
Not sure what it was but the goat sanctuary have also been losing quite a number of their MoD goats of late - she was always the least vigorous of the three, as well as the oldest. Poor old girl :(
Needless to say, losing an animal that is classed as livestock requires different handling than losing a pet, so we had to call round to find a licensed carrier to dispose of her body because it's against the law to bury it. We had to wrap her in a tarp and drag the body to a collection point for the lorry, which is coming tomorrow. Very sad business, but at least she had a nice life with us for a few months as part of T's posse of goatie girlies. RIP Gerry :(
No comments:
Post a Comment