Monday, June 2, 2008

Mutual horse help

In my recent article entitled Horse sense [display], I didn't try to conceal my irritation about Alison's horses escaping and then pounding across my lawn at Gamone. The surroundings of my house are so rudimentary [the soil at Gamone is full of rocks] that they hardly deserve to be called a lawn. Well, I'm happy to say that Alison hasn't come down here yet to retrieve her animals... which is fine. They are still devouring, with obvious pleasure, huge quantities of delicious Gamone grass and weeds. And I prefer to see these lovely horses at Gamone, happy, rather than back up on Bob's muddy slopes, which simply don't have the same vegetal resources as here. For me, a hungry horse is like a mistreated dog. I can't stand such images. I'm terribly sensitive to the sufferings of animals.

Although there's still a lot of rain at Gamone, the weather is warm, and flies have become a constant problem for my donkeys and for Alison's horses. Betsy [the beige female] and Diamond [the white male] often stand side by side, eye to arse, in such a way that the sweeping tail of one animal chases flies from the head of the other. Nice thinking. My donkeys Moshé and Mandrin [located on the upper side of the electric fence] often watch the horses in amazement. This kind of cooperation would be unthinkable between intelligent but egotistic donkeys. Let's face it, in Aussie donkey-like terms: Would you, or would you not, be prepared to stick your nose in a mate's arse simply because he's bothered by flies?

No comments:

Post a Comment