Living alone ...

So my mare is still alone. She spends her nights locked into her main paddock, unless a storm is brewing when she will now go into her stable. I guess part of the reason we don't force her to stay there is that the stable used to be used as a training holding gate for endurance horses, and has a concrete floor. Too long standing on concrete, they say, is not good for horses' legs. Oh?

Well, try telling that to Her Ladyship. After her 6.00 am feed of a morning she paces up and down the fence, wanting out. These days with having had so much rain the grass is quite long and the tips are sweet. Does she want out to graze? No, she wants out so that she can stand at the back door waiting for a carrot, a treat, talking to or a brush. She stands with her head in the door so she has full view of the kitchen and can watch the comings and going. One back leg cocked, gently swishing flies with her tail. Even if we are mean and shoo her away, she will go off, sulking and watch from an area nearby. This is in the sun, but she can see pretty well the entire property from that vantage point. Eat grass, you stupid horse. Nope.

The fencing here is very poor quality and has deteriorated since we have been here. We were promised it would be done when we first moved in, but while they keep promising, it has never been done. We thought at one stage of doing it ourselves, however, since we have decided to move on at the end of the year, it really isn't worth doing. So I doubt if we will get another horse just now.

She is going off at the end of July to get ready to be bred. Once she is safely in foal she will be sent to someone's place in Queensland to await us. Otherwise it is too much fussing around during pregnancy. She is basically a happy horse, but she is always a little spooky if her routine changes too much. I don't want to get her pregnant and for her to reabsorb or abort the foal because she is too stressed.

When she went away in 2001 to get pregnant with Eternal Strangers, they chose the hottest day of the year to send her home. The driver drove to Gosford and unloaded all the horses and gave them water and food for the night, and continued the trip the following day. He didn't charge extra for this and we were very grateful he did this. He explained that with Bell on the truck, because she travels so well, he puts her on first and the others follow with much less fuss. She seems to have a quietening effect during travel as well, and the company loves taking her. I guess I should hire her out in between breedings - lol.

EI was a nightmare, because we should have had her bred for a foal this year. Now when I consider the fencing problem, I guess in some respects, for us at least, since she never got the infection, it was a bit of a blessing. The microchip is forgotten and we just live day to day.

Her Ladyship, the ex-Racehorse ...

She's a sweet old thing, our mare. She is so lonely at the moment she has taken to following the old person around while he does his outside chores. He says it is like having a big, spooky dog.

When we came home from Christmas shopping last Saturday, the boys ran ahead of us with the trolley and parcels, and were calling her. She came galloping up to see what was wrong. She so cares about those boys.

Her hair is so fine, her face is drier than any Arabian horse's head. Her legs have dried out and are just slightly feathered at the back of the fetlock. Her hair is so fine on her body it is smooth and silky. She has blood vessels close to the surface to keep her body cooler - so if she passes that on to her Anglo-Arabian foal, endurance will definitely be on the cards. Right now she is an extremely beautiful animal.

We feed her good food, that we have experimented with over time. She is wormed on a regular basis, she is not supplimented at the moment, because she is getting loads of good grass as we have had some good rain. She is a little spoilt at the moment only because we are not sure of our status with EI and don't want to risk getting another horse here until it is all gone again. We have seen people out riding around here - we don't know if they are supposed to be or not. They don't talk to us: they don't know us.

One day it will be over and we will be able to get her a companion. Till then she only has us.