28th April 2007
I have learnt a trick this week and it is such fun - you may remember that I can pretend to be Oliver Twist and pick my bowl up and ask for more - and I have to say it does usually work and I do get given a little extra.
Well this week someone else had been playing with their bowl and had taken it to the field gate, so I decided to do even better, and as I had a human audience, what better way to impress than to pick up my bowl and carry it right back to the kitchen?
Well as you can imagine my special human shrieked with delight and as a reward put some very tasty treats put in it and then I overheard the fact that she is going to ask me to do it again and take a photograph!! - fame at last - I was told that I was a very clever donkey to carry it the right way up for such a long way without dropping it.
Gigi has not been at all well this week, the vet has been again - this time Gigi had a very swollen udder, not mastitis as it did not hurt her, but she had a great mass of saggy skin full of fluid hanging down under her tummy - that was because the excess fluid was collecting under the skin at the lowest point. The human's are very worried so Gigi has been having extra care and she is allowed to do and go where she wishes. She is groomed several times a day which she loves - and as you know from being poorly yourselves it is all that extra attention that matters and helps to make you feel better, so we are all trying very hard to be good and kind.
21st April 2007
Oh, I have been so very happy these last few days--as you may recall I have worshipped Capella from the day I arrived, but sadly the feelings were not reciprocated, however things have changed and she hasdecided that I can join her and the precious Annabelle, and to make things even better Capella has also allowed her son Benjamin to join us and make a foursome, we have had such fun all together!!
We have galloped around the paddocks and the field, all of us one behind each other and Annabelle doing very well to keep up with us and squealing with delight. We are together as a group all day and keep fairly close whilst we are browsing - Annabelle is becoming less attached to Capella and I am hoping that she will be allowed to travel with me when we go to shows as I am finding her quite good fun.
Poor Gigi has not been at all well this week, the vet came three days in a row; she had been in a paddock where the hedge had just been cut, leaving some very long rough grass and Gigi decided that that would be the place to graze and to have a rest, not knowing that that is the sort of place that some horrid bugs called 'ticks' like to hide.
These very nasty, ugly creatures clung on to Gigi and although we are groomed every night when we go into our stables managed to conceal themselves in her fur. Now I don't know if you all know about ticks but they are dreadful things which feed on warm blood, - any blood, yours, mine, sheep, dogs, cats - but on this occasion Gigi - when they fix their jaws into the skin it makes a hole through which they suck the blood and that sets up a dreadful irritation.he result being that Gigi has pulled out enormous patches of fur showing some very horrible swollen infected wounds. Ticks just have one good meal in a year and then drop off, and if you try and pull them off the jaws can stay behind and create even more infection.
The first day poor Gigi had two injections the next day she had to have three, she was very brave for the first two but she had to stamp her back feet very fast when she had the third, so it must have really hurt her.
The third day I heard the vet say I am going to treat all of them - I shuddered at the thought of those injections, because underneath all my chat I am not really very brave. However, the vet was very kind and began by just looking into my fur very gently, I loved that and then he sprayed me all over with something which was actually quite cooling given that it was a very hot day - no injections after all!!
So having taken the lead and shown the other donkeys that there was nothing to fear, they were all treated, so hopefully those ticks won't want to taste us any of us again, and just in case we aren't allowed in that paddock with the long grass now.
14th April 2007
This week it has been bites, bites and bites, and not very nice carrotty or minty ones with me doing the biting either!
I mean those horrible flying things that appear in the evenings and me being very sweet tasting, are their first landing place in fact they have made a bee line for me, they made me itch so much that I simply had to rub my tail very hard to get rid of the irritation - result - no irritation but also no tail hair at the top either - as you can imagine - big panic on the human front.
Best of all it was actually a human error that caused the problem - someone had apparently asked for some of our droppings for their garden, so these have been collected each day, put into black bags and placed conveniently near our stables waiting for collection.
However as you can imagine nine of us produced rather more droppings than were required and some bags have been there for quite a long time and had generated rather a lot of warmth in the sun, needless to say every flying insect seemed to want to inspect these bags and then fly into our stables and to inspect the source of the delicately oozing black plastic wrapped feats, first hand!
Fortunately common sense and hygiene have prevailed all bags have now been moved far away, and the humans have pressure hosed anything that could be hosed, disinfected everything within sight and produced a wonderful lotion which is massaged on to any of us who are suffering, so instead of having a brown tail and bottom I now have a very white one, but I simply love having it massaged on to me.
I heard Caroline, our stable girl who also works at the vets talking to our human about something that she is going to get which will be dabbed on to us to keep these flying things away both day and night - that will be wonderful because then we will be able to concentrate on our browsing without having to swish our tails or use our back feet to move the insects away from our tummies.
8th April 2007
Oh what a week it has been baths, baths and baths!!!
I think that the idea behind this sudden urge for bodily cleanliness was preciptated by some very warm days and the fact that our stable area is a real sun trap - hence any donkey seen rubbing or scratching was quickly taken and given a bath with a special shampoo claiming all sorts of cure all properties and guaranteed to stop us rubbing. So there they were warm buckets of water, no cold water hoses here, not that there should be any anywhere as the cold water would be a real shock to our matabolism, plent of old towels to blot our coats as dry as possible and bathed in plenty of time for us to be warm and dry before bed-time.
I had my bath sometime ago if you remember, but as I felt so good after it I thought that I would line up for attention this time as well - of course I was ignored - but persuasion is my middle name and so I persisted day after day until the humans got the message that I wanted another bath!
I noticed though, and as you know I don't miss much that goes on here, that they changed the shampoo and I was bathed in Baby Shampoo which I was told would be gentle for my delicate skin. My coat feels absolutely wonderful now just like silk.
Of course the dreadful spoiled brat, Annabelle thought that she ought to have a bath, but was told that she was far too young, so to get some attention she drank out of my bucket of shampoo and had soap suds all over her mouth and nose, and when that was taken away from her she rolled on the hard concrete in all of the soap suds so she had soap suds all over her back. Oh she has so much to learn.
