Stablemates

The evening winter routine has been adopted at Rock HQ. Venturing outside the protective glare of the sodium anti aircraft light installed on the end of the stable involves me wandering around falling over obstacles and animals in the dark or struggling to stay upright because of the mud. So my world is limited to the safe yellow circle of light that strategically covers the kennels, goat houses and duck house. It still requires negotiating Somme like mudbaths but at least you can see where you are going to fall. There is no point attempting any outside jobs in the evening other than checking all animals are still alive, fed and watered. The only exception to the no jobs rule are the horses.

The horses need to be mucked out twice a day, its amazing how they can convert so much quality fruit and fibre into such copious amounts of pooh. We are often asked by keen amateur gardeners if we have any to spare, well considering each horse can produce a small lorry load daily we can spare a bit. Each horse has its own way of "going", William makes nice neat piles always in the same place and is a pleasure to muck out, he takes less than a minute and he watches with interest as you carry out his number twos forkful by forkful.

Apollo spreads his around with his nose so that the whole floor is covered, as is his face, this needs brushing up, or off depending on which messy bit you are addressing. He tries to help by knocking over the wheelbarrow. The dogs also try to help while you muck out, for some reason they view horse doings as I would Beluga Caviar, a delicacy not to be missed. The wheelbarrow suspiciously empties each time you go and collect a new scoopful.

Trevor the shitland, well it looks like he makes models out of his and then he stamps all over them, he probably makes effigies of me, those he doesn't stamp on he kicks over the walls. Never before in the history of horse ownership has so much mess been made in such a small space by such a tiny horse.