Well...we've finally reached the end of 2014...and what a year...lots of hard work, that's for sure...it's hard to believe everything that has happened in 12 months...
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| January brought extreme weather with huge gales with lots of rain...pretty much non-stop, which Frodo celebrated by turning himself into a mud monster! It was the first month of our first ever p4p calendar...and Lord de Mauley (the head of Defra) wrote to us with more details about the code of conduct for hot branding...confirming that warmblood societies had been informed it is now illegal to hot brand. |
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| February brought us some of the most horrendous storms we have experienced, we were constantly battered by hugely powerful storms with torrential rain, hail, sleet and snow on occasion, and 70mph winds!! 11 days in a row with severe weather warnings! In February we published our exposé report uncovering the illegal live export of Dartmoor Hill Ponies...and Tavistock market announced that they were no longer going to have wild pony sales.
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| March and the beginning of Spring meant we could finally get down to rolling the fields and working with the ponies again, particularly with Topsy - who had a visit from her former carers Nicola and Katie who were able to stroke her for the first time. Our MP, Neil Parish, agreed to take our live export report forward to Lord de Mauley and Defra. |
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| In April, Topsy's training continued and she started to interact with other volunteers and go for walks out with the other ponies. Peter and Frodo started some Horse Agility training. |
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| In May, Topsy conquered her fear of taking food from people - finally trusting that people she knows won't try to trick her. Topsy and Rocky entered their first Horse Agility competitions, with Topsy winning 6th place in a class of 12. We discovered that some breeders of Exmoor ponies were continuing to ear notch/tag their ponies which we reported to Trading Standards...who gave a very clear warning at the Exmoor Pony Society AGM that failure to adhere to the law will result in prosecution. |
June was a hive of activity - including a cat rescue; the round-up of our Devon Wildlife Trust conservation ponies Misty, Star and Breeze; hosting Vanessa Bee's "Handling the wild and Traumatised Horse" course and rounding up Ebony and Apache as part of this;...and then all the preparations and excitement of St John's Fayre.
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| The beginning of July was haymaking with a bumper crop of 734 bales and an amazing team of helpers made swift work of getting it all stacked in the barn. Faye, Peter, Margaret, Frodo, Topsy and Rocky all competed in the Horse Agility Summer of Sport. We had a stall at the Tiverton Balloon Festival...our first 3 day fundraising event. And more importantly, Arthur, our new pony arrived... |
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| In August we held more fundraising stalls, took part in more Horse Agility competitions, with Arthur learning how to complete the different obstacles. Defra sent a rather disappointing response to our live export exposé with absolutely no interest in the illegal activity we uncovered or the scale of it. More positively, we discovered Serrapeptase for Topsy, which made a huge difference to her arthritis. |
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| In September we gained our first patrons, Vanessa Bee and Neil Parish. We had a beautiful end to the summer at the yard...unfortunately in the wider world news headlines were filled with coverage of a particular organisation promoting eating Dartmoor ponies to "save" them...rather missing the point of stopping the overbreeding in the first place! |
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| October was the market season and we attended all 3 wild pony sales at Chagford, Brendon and Hallworthy to monitor welfare. With the Dartmoor pony story rumbling on continuously in the media, we were able to get another side of the story represented in The Daily Telegraph. Very sadly, at the yard, Ted and Jenny lost Tessa, their beautiful Collie who had lived to the grand age of 16. |
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| In November, we were able to blog about the talk we attended in Bovey Tracey - about the important research results of equine research scientist Robyn Petrie Ritchie who has been working to find a suitable viable management plan for Dartmoor to stop the overbreeding of ponies. Margaret's research proved that supermarkets and top London stores are not willing to stock pony meat. We won our first Horse Agility 1st! Bisto found his new home with Jenny and Barnaby. We had an amazing time at the Christmas Without Cruelty Festival in Exeter raising £365.10 for the ponies...and the new dog Oscar arrived. |
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| December saw our last fundraising stall and lots of lovely contact from our supporters, loan ponies and fosterers...and we all finally ran out of energy with colds and being under the weather...probably not surprising really, what a year! We successfully competed at Horse Agility throughout the year...competing at just about every month since we started...though I'm afraid we missed December...but we've had lots of fun and are very proud of our ponies' progress! |
We really have done a lot of work - and the review doesn't even list the 365 days a year mucking out, hay soaking, haynet filling, and perhaps the other less glamorous jobs that come with animal keeping...and of course all the behind the scenes admin work!...Thank you again to everyone for their support and particularly to Ted and Jenny and all our wonderful volunteers who enable all this to happen...we all work without any sort of salary...all for the love of the ponies and with the aim of making a difference!
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