The Cruelty of Fate

Mum is very very upset - she had been so pleased that Belle, the old mare at the fat farm, had been saved and was coming to the UK to end her days.

Belle, if you don't know her like I do, is a big chestnut mare who in her youth was a total stunner - a really good looking horse. Quite why she has fallen so far in the world to be worth only the meat on her ribs I don't know, but some kind person bought the good banner for her that said she was saved. I was so pleased for her as she was a very gentle dignified girl who should be spending her final years in leisure and comfort, not as someone's dinner.

We were all getting ready to welcome her to her new country but sadly she was not well enough to travel and so she is still at the fat farm and everyone is trying to find someone kind in France to take her - mum has been in touch with racehorse trainer Francois Doumen in case he might know someone and asked her friends in France if anyone could help. But it is so difficult to find the right place for her.

Isn't life cruel - to be so close to being safe and having it all snatched away from you, just as your hoof gets onto the ramp of the good lorry!

Even worse, Belle's daughter is also there - how bad is that, mum and daughter both going to be killed and having to watch it happen to a member of the family. Belle's daughter looks so thin as well. I am well out of there I fear.

Mum says life just isn't fair at times. It can have the cruellest of ironies at times.

Haylage - One Day Only

We have run out of hay - disaster!!!! How could that silly woman let this happen, knowing how much I enjoy my dinner every night.....will it be a return to starvation.

She says it's not her fault that our hay supplier was waiting for more to arrive and she ordered in good time. Anyway, to tide us over, she bought some very sweet smelling haylage and just as I was enjoying it, the delivery of hay turned up - so we are back to the standard hay bales.

I'm not sure if I am happy or sad - it is nice to see all that hay stacked up neatly waiting for me to eat it (makes me feel secure to know it is there and that there should be plenty for a semi starved donkey) but on the other hand I was quite enjoying the new flavour of haylage - much sweeter, softer, a bit more aromatic, I could get used to it!

We have finished the bale that was opened and there are two left, but I have been told these are 'emergency' only rations and I shouldn't get too excited that they will be opened soon.

The Wooly Mammoth

Mum says that today I resemble a woolly mammoth - my long coat is absolutely plastered with shavings as I have been lying down having a good sleep - and I look totally unkempt.

She says I just need some tusks and I would be spitting image of a woolly mammoth - naturally I take great exception to this, as I am a fine, giraffe donkey of the Poitou persuasion.

Vodka Suffers Post Traumatic Stress

Mum thinks I am suffering from this - although I am eating, sleeping and improving in my physical health, she feels that I am very blank/zombie like, not taking an interest, being very passive and submissive and well just not responding.

She thinks it is a bit like I am a concentration camp survivor - I saw the selections, I saw them being herded into the bad lorries that took them to their deaths - to cope with it, I just switched off. I hid, made myself small and invisible, as that way you didn't get picked out, or you didn't get singled out for bad treatment.

To get by, I sort of shrank, disappeared and even now that I am safe, I just don't believe it and don't know yet how to behave differently.

She says that many concentration camp survivors suffer guilt for having survived, and while she doesn't think this is what is wrong with me, I have just become so used to skulking in the background, trying to blend in, not stick not, not be noticed, that I don't know how to stop it now

She says she would love to see me display some naughtiness, some spirit but that at the moment I just am not capable of it - I receive affection but I don't respond to it very much as I don't know what to do. Hopefully I will learn how to do this.

At the moment she says maybe the best thing is to leave me alone, not make demands on me and let me work it out for myself. I will have to think about this as I know that the other donkeys are much naughtier than me.

She thinks that the constant changing of the herd, horses ponies and donkeys arriving all the time, you make a friend and then wham you turn around and they have gone to be killed - it must have been very unsettling for me, and also that she doesn't know if other horses bullied me so that I got so thin - she says that she looked on the website to see the horses there now and many of them are looking very skinny, probably as the spring grass hasn't come through yet and a lot of them look very very poor.

I want to be a good donkey - I never do anything wrong as I'm scared of the consequences if I do - will she send me away again, will that bad lorry come for me? I am yet to be convinced that this is my forever home and that I can chill out and relax and stop worrying.

My Generosity Knows No Bounds

Aimee now had ringworm as well - mum is less than impressed, Ferguson had just about finished his course of powders when Aimee (who we thought was a carrier like me but no signs) has become even more spotty than she is normally.

So we are now all being dosed with these funny powders in our food to get rid of it.

Ferguson is irate - his view on it is that it is like getting a dose of the .... from a french filly - he is not at all amused.

Mum is just praying that she doesn't get it!

The Sleeping Beauty

It was lovely and warm today - I was so sleepy that I just had to lie down in the field and have a doze.

Mum saw me - it is the first time I have slept in the field and she wished she had been able to take a picture of a Vodka donkey dozing flat out - ears still flicking in case of danger.

It reminded me of hot weather in France or wherever it was before I came to Scotland - maybe I am going to have lots of sunny days and maybe the odd Vodka Cocktail at sundown.

Sounds good to me.

A Death in the Family

Mum has been a bit sad recently - her cat Doodle got ill and died very suddenly on Easter Monday - she was unable to breath and despite lots of pills and potions, she died in mum's arms.

Doodle had a very sad life till she met mum and dad. She was living rough in Bognor Regis, having lost her home - she was a very long haired cat and needed lots of grooming so all her coat was matted and tangled - so much so it hurt her skin as the knots pulled her skin when she moved. She was cowering and hiding in a coal shed and someone burnt her with cigarettes!

She was finally rescued and taken into care but no one wanted her, as she was so nervous and such a scaredy cat that when people came to see her she would hide. She did get a new home but it only lasted a few days as she was too scared to come out and use her litter tray so they called her dirty - she wasn't, she just was so so frightened.

She was in care for nearly 18 months, living in a cattery pen, until mum and dad took her home. She lived under their bed for a year - with a litter tray and food tray and yes she worked out which were which! - and it was nearly two years before she was brave enough to venture out and explore the house. She never really got outdoors much - she occasionally walked out onto the lawn but never more than a few feet from the door - as all the bad things that happened to her happened outside and she didn't want to take the risk that she couldn't get inside again to where it was safe.

Mum said it was very unfair that she had been taken from us as she wasn't a very old cat and she was enjoying her new home in Scotland and we had been looking forward to seeing Doodle outdoors on the decking, having tea and sandwiches, in the summer. But it was not to be.

Mum says that it was just a sad accident, that I shouldn't worry, that Doodle's death doesn't mean I am at risk - she says they buried her, they didn't eat her or anything horrible like that. They say she is buried on the hill so that she can see everywhere, all the places she never got to explore herself. Mum says that a lot of her cats are quite old now and that it is likely that some of them will die before I do but I shouldn't worry, it is just how life is.

I find it very confusing, in France many of the young foals die and I don't understand that, when they should have such long lifes ahead of them. Often their mothers die with them or have to watch them being killed. I just can't understand these things at all, it is just too too hard.

Doodle's resting place is very beautiful. Maybe one day I can visit it and prune the shrubs and flowers, I feel I have a latent talent for landscaping.