May's Calendar Photo

Everyone's loving this month's calendar photo of Tasha and Muddy which they kindly sent us to be added onto the 2019 calendar - and how could we resist?!  These two are very bonded and go on all kinds of adventures together!  When they lived close to us they would come and visit and Muddy would come and say "hi" to his old mates.  They've moved to North Devon now so I suspect Muddy might be making the most of some potential riding on the beach which I'm sure he will absolutely love!

When the original herd of over 50 ponies were living in the herd field Paul and Cilla would check the ponies everyday and count them to make sure they were all there.  One day a pony was missing and upon searching they found (the then un-named) "Muddy" stuck in a bog, just disappearing under the surface.  They were able to pull him out and took him back to the farm for some TLC.  He was a youngster but had no Mum with him and it's possible that she had died before the herd was rescued.  He's certainly grown into a very well-built, sturdy chap and I'm sure they'll have plenty more adventures to come!

Baby rescued Muddy on the right.  Girlie and her foal Bisto on the left.

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In Memory of Folly

We had some very sad news in mid-April regarding Folly, one of the original P4P herd members.

Folly has had a very loving home for a long while now and she has always been an important member of the family.  She has been living with a lady called Faye (not P4P Faye) who first met Folly when she was 12 - Faye was at a friends house and was the first person to ever catch Folly in their field - she took her out for walks and they bonded. Folly then joined her pony and their little herd.

In December 2018 Folly had been diagnosed with cancer and had an operation to remove tumours.  Very sadly, despite her family's best efforts, the tumours returned and very aggressively so - her family gave her the best quality of life for as long as they could and then in April the decision was made that it was time for her to be put to sleep. 

We are very grateful to her family for having given Folly such a wonderful home.  She was one of the very traumatised mares who had been ear-notched and had a lot of head trauma which Paul had to work through.  Folly had to regain trust in people and she was very lucky to be able to spend some very happy years with her family.

Run free little Folly...Misty, Brenda, Gus, Mrs Brownhead (Tess), Tinker, Breeze and Munchie are over that "rainbow bridge" too...

Folly with Paul in one of her training sessions.

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April - Start of the Updates!

Well...let's try to do a catch up!  So April came and went just as quickly as March did...Jenny still recovering obviously after her accident and operation (and as of last night another ambulance trip to A&E for her, poor thing, but is home again now).  As we are very short of regular helpers now, we are very grateful to Frances who managed to get over a couple of times to give Faye a hand on the heavier work jobs.  It seems that just about everyone we know is poorly at the moment with some sort of serious ailment or another so we send out lots of "get well/healing" wishes!

The photo above should look familiar as it was taken in 2017 - after Jeremy disappeared from the nature reserve at Marsland Mouth (still incomprehensible!) we decided to bring the other ponies home as the site was no longer secure and we could not guarantee their safety.  This photo captured the reuniting of friends back at the yard...the photo shows Puffin, Star and Breeze sniffing noses with Munchie, and then Wolfie and Dan in the background...a happy moment quite full of ponies and greetings! Little did we know that we would soon lose two of the ponies featured here - Breeze (to suspected herbicide poisoning on a different reserve the following year) and Munchie this year.   Both were such big wonderful characters who had fan clubs of their own...ponies definitely have a way of melting your heart!  People really feel they connect with them even if they have very short encounters.

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