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Home  Business Reviews Chicci has 11 Puppies
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Chicci has 11 Puppies |
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Written by June Wolfe
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Until a year ago we were quite happy with our two lovely rescue dogs, Scruffy and Suzie, with the daily visits of Chici, our Spanish neighbours dog, who thought she lived with us too. However, last year, our neighbours moved into the town, and Chici became unofficially ours, as we couldn’t bear for her to be left on her own next door. It didn’t make much difference to us really, as the dogs all got along very well. The only problem we had was that she hadn’t been spayed as our neighbours didn’t agree with it.
Typically, Chici became pregnant, and on Monday gave birth to eleven puppies! She is a wonderful mum, and is managing to keep them all fed, forever shifting them around to give them all a turn. Thank goodness our neighbours have now agreed to have her fixed, but we are left with eleven puppies to find homes for. If any of you out there would like a puppy towards the end of October, please get in touch. They are all black and if they turn out like their mum, will be of medium size with lovely kind natures. Though I would love to keep one myself, I doubt very much if Clive will let me, especially as we have recently given a home to a Spanish water dog called Chocco. Our guests might not appreciate so many dogs around, though I have to say that so far we have always had dog lovers staying with us, I dread the day when we don’t!
As well as the dogs, the horse population continued to grow, all be it unintentionally.
A friend of Elizabeth’s decided that she would like to buy a horse and keep it on livery at our yard. Along came Lola, a young horse, purchased locally.
She got on well with our existing horses from the start and it wasn’t many months before she was officially part of our family, as for various reasons we ended up buying her.
We thought that we had now completed our horse family and certainly didn’t intend to have anymore, but once more fate intervened.
One day I saw an advert for a mare and foal for sale to a good home due to their elderly owner becoming ill and unable to care for them. Once more I couldn’t resist and along came Capri and Bonny. Capri is short for Caprichosa, which means willful, and she soon lived up to her name!
Her previous owner had never ridden her and didn’t know anything about her past. She seemed very placid and nice natured though, so we didn’t expect any real problems. When she arrived she only had one shoe, so we rode her briefly to see how she was (and she was fine),then waited for the farrier. She proved to be incredibly scared of farriers, and had to be sedated. Following the farriers visit we tried to ride her again, but instead of the well behaved horse she had been before, she had turned into a rearing monster! We couldn’t understand it, but it seemed that she had pain in her head. We called a vet, assuming she had a problem with her teeth. To our horror, the vet discovered that when the farrier had injected her, he had blown the vein in her neck, causing incredible pain in her head, it could have caused her to go blind! We changed her bridle to a bitless one to make her head more comfortable and she was soon fine. She is now a lovely horse to ride. Needless to say we never used that farrier again.
Bonny, Capri’s filly is a stocky, bargy little character. Last spring when Bonny turned three, Elizabeth started to ride her. Using Monty Roberts methods she was able to put a saddle on her back and ride her all in one session. Within a couple of days she was hacking her out – it was incredible. Unfortunately, the riding had to stop for a while, when we realised that she was pregnant.
Poor Bonny, her pregnancy didn’t go smoothly. We didn’t know when she was due, so when she started to show signs of labour we assumed that was that. Unfortunately it turned out to be a pregnancy related colic. She was so ill that I spent two nights in the stable with her. The vet started talking about caesareans and told me that the foal was in the wrong position. He showed me what I would need to do if the foal started to be born the wrong way, explaining that I would have to try to push the head back in and pull the feet out! She was in such pain that she was self harming, throwing herself against the walls over and over again. Thankfully after a couple of days it was like it had never happened and she finally had her foal a couple of weeks later, on her own, in the early hours of the morning with no problems whatsoever. The foal was so thin that we called her Twiggy – a strange name now that she has turned into a big fat thing! She is stocky and bargy just like her mum and completely adorable.
Capri was pregnant too, and gave birth to her foal Picasso a couple of weeks later. The family relationship is complicated – they all have the same dad but Capri’s son is Bonnys half brother but also Twiggys , or is he Twiggys uncle, with Capri being Bonnys mum and Twiggys grandmother? all very confusing.
Three foals in six weeks – how lucky! Foals thrive on having other foals to play with so it was perfect timing. Now the three of them and Spirit all have fun together and are very independent of their mums. On top of this, they also have their dad, Leo to play with.
Our latest addition to the adult horse population is Hercules, a wonderful English cob and a great weight carrier for heavier riders. He put Leo’s nose out of joint when he arrived. Poor Leo was used to being the top man, and suddenly there was this big macho horse taking his girlfriends away from him! Luckily they soon got used to each other and Leo has accepted that Hercules is boss. They are now good friends and can often be seen grooming each other.
Having the horses is not all fun – there is constant work involved, not always pleasant.
In the winter the paddocks can become so water logged and muddy that pushing a wheelbarrow is virtually impossible. The horses love it though – you would think they were hippos the way they roll in the mud. Having clay soil, the mud then dries on their coats like cement and is virtually impossible to get off. They are happy though, which is all that matters.
Our most hated job is getting the straw in every summer. We are lucky that our neighbour Pedro grows several fields of crops and we can buy the straw. This involves collecting the bales off the fields in our trailer in the July heat. You have to cover up completely, as otherwise the straw cuts you to pieces. Its horrendous- 2000 bales, with the trailer only taking 20 at a time. It’s completely exhausting . One of these days I expect Clive to say ‘it’s me or the horses!’- after a full days work, the last thing he needs is to then go out collecting straw!
Of course, with the recent water shortages the straw yield last year was much lower than usual and since early spring this year, until the summer harvest we have had to buy in vacuum packed golden grass for the horses. Though expensive, it actually worked out more economical than the horrendous prices being charged for what little hay or straw was available at the time. Though very nourishing for the horses there have been unexpected side effects. Because the grass has less bulk than straw, the horses eat it very quickly and are left for much of the day with nothing to eat. I have tried my best to ease their boredom by cutting grass from verges and giving them tree cuttings and logs to chew as well as giving them their grass in small amounts at more frequent intervals but to our dismay they started chewing their post and rail fencing. Creosote helps to stop them chewing but unfortunately you can no longer buy it as it has been withdrawn from sale. We have electric tape around the field but they still manage to chew where they can reach without getting zapped. They chewed through both gate posts and we had to replace them with metal bar, which doesn’t exactly look as good but at least is secure. This led to me having a really stupid accident earlier in the summer. As I was getting a horse out of the gate, the metal bar touched the electric fence tape and the current went through me and then the horse, causing her to jump and stamp her foot down on the top of my foot. By that night it was very swollen, but I ignored it as I could not be bothered to go to hospital. The next day Clive and I had planned a picnic on the horses with some friends and this went ahead, with me just squeezing my foot into an old boot. As the week went on the pain increased and I had to give in and go for an x-ray. It turned out that the tendons and nerves on the top of my foot were damaged and I had to have a bandage on for 10 days and rest with my foot up as much as possible – not easy with the horses to look after.
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June Wolfe |
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