One extreme to the other!

Its been a day of extremes, which in a way was as planned, this being end of week one of foster care fortnight, an annual event to raise awareness of the shortage of foster carers in the UK. Red Kite's first event was an 30 mile hike/run/stumble, the second event took place today, a rather more genteel affair. More of that later. First off the usual routine was to be done, the feeding and watering took longer today as we had Socks the collie and Rainbow the pony. Socks was no trouble but Rainbow didn't look like she had eaten and so under the watchful eye of Rocky above, I tried to persuade Rainbow to have breakfast.

If she did not have her much needed colostrum feed, the first milk containing antibodies, she would almost certainly die. Having failed to get her to suckle, due to a combination of her being too tall, the nipple being too low and small small and both our general incompetence, Ian the Vet was summonsed. He had similar problems but persevered and we learned how to milk a horse (very carefully if you value your teeth) and bottle feed a less than day old foal. This didn't work very well so the nice vet set off to get various drugs needed to ensure Rainbow stayed with us, replacement milk powder and a book on how to perform blood transfusions, the next stage should we not be able to get colostrum into our diddy horse. Plasma taken from Misty containing the much needed antibodies would be the only hope.

Work had to go on and the Red Kite Cream Tea was a great success with help from various volunteers several lorry loads of strawberry cream scones were handed to ravenous hordes of foster carers eager to sign up to Red Kite in return for the advertised tea and cakes.

The press turned out and we are expecting some good coverage in the local papers and magazines.

Back at Rock HQ Rainbow was upright but still not eating. After being found asleep on her side and causing a minor heart attack in yours truly we decided we needed more expert advice and so phoned the very nice lady who sold us Johnny Big Potatoes, Rainbows dad, who gave us the best advice of all "Don't panic!" We try not to but being the novice day old foal owners that we are, its hard not to. Percy the agoraphobic pigeon was cured by Socks who thought the not very keen to race pigeon was a new squeaky toy when it landed his part of the stable. Minus a mouthful of tail feathers Percy was last seen on the roof of Rock HQ. Meanwhile Socks has met the Dolyhir Clan and had a fantastic run around the garden. The vet gave him a once over this morning so he's got a clean bill of health and so far has passed all tests. He's going to be an excellent family dog.