After a very long break from blogger I have returned to bring you all adorable photos of ponies and horses, and also to fill you in on what has happened during my absences on blogger. So let's start with the riverbank as it was the last place you all saw the equines. I didn't like the land owner and it wasn't really suitable for horses but to be honest I was pretty much forced into it, so what happened? I think you can guess it's a riverbank, it flooded, of course it had to flood at night while all the horses and ponies were boxed.
All the paddocks on the riverbank are in a straight line leading down to the stables, because of the very bad set up we had to walk through or drive through these paddocks just to get down to the horses everyday. So anyways we got a phone call telling us that the riverbank was flooding and we might want to check on the horses, when we turned up the first paddock was flooding rather fast, so I started walking down to get Niko and my mother went to see if she could get the key to open the big gate that was closer to the stables than the gate I had come in from. By the time I finally got to the stables the water was a little lower than my chest, so understandably the horses were getting quite upset in their boxes, but seeing how high the water was getting I couldn't let them out or they might have ended up in the river at night, which would have ended in tragedy I'm sure.
So I head collared Niko and got him out of his box, when he was out of his box he was as good as gold walking through the flood waters, we made it to the big gate with little trouble, unfortunately the chap that had the key for the big gate had left, I might add that he left knowing full well that the riverbank was flooding and that we would need to get our horses off, so there I was stuck behind a really big gate holding Niko while the riverbank flooded. Yay! ain't horse ownership grand.
So off my mother went to find the guy or something like that, after what seemed like an age of standing in flood water during the middle of the night talking to Niko she finally got back, about time too, one of my brothers and the guy with the key were with her so they got the gate open and my mother took Niko for me.
Then my brother and I went down the road that runs next to the riverbank till we got on the part of the road just above the stables, I told him to stay up on the road as he is not horsey and wouldn't be able to help me with them, when I came to the boxes I checked to see how everyone was doing luckily the stable doors were keeping lots of the water out, so it wasn't as high in the boxes, however Tipper was getting very upset at this point so I decided to take him next. Looking back maybe not my best idea. He came charging out of his box and nearly knocked me over, then as we left the paddock with the stables in it he went kinda crazy bucking and did knock me over, being knocked into dirty flood water by a crazy TB is perhaps the least fun thing I have done and I will definitely avoid it happening again. Luckily I did keep hold of him and got up, then Tipper decided he wasn't going to leave the paddock from either of the two gateways and in the end we had to climb up onto the road through barbed-wire, fortunately my brother helped hold the wire out of the way.
So we made it out with Tipper but by this time I was freezing cold and looking like a drowned rat I'm sure, honestly I didn't think I'd be able to get the others out by myself, so much to my shame we had to get the fire brigade in and after many more hours of being wet and cold all the horses were out and safe.
We had the help of friends and other horsey people to move our five equines onto a new bit of land that they overwintered on, sadly with no boxes but they all came through winter in good condition. Then the time came to move them off of our friends land, luckily we were able to rent an orchard just across the road from the orchard they had been living in before we had to move them to the riverbank, now all is going well and everyone is happily enjoying summer.
All the photos that have been used in this post are of the equines in their new home. I still have a bit more to tell you all about what's been happening while I've been away from blogger but as I've rambled on for so long about the flood I think I'll save it for another post.
I hope you're all well and that you and your equines are all enjoying summer.
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