Saturday 14 June 2008

Happy Hoof

One final word on panda food: I saw in the Guiness Book of Records, in the "World's Sleepiest Mammal" section, that pandas snooze for 18 hours a day. They only eat bamboo, which doesn't provide much nourishment, so they sleep to conserve energy. Right. So why not nibble on a bit of fruit then? And stay awake longer? Or some nuts? Our two-tone friends' stubborn refusal to mix up their diet seems a bit daft to me. Clearly they don't have much to do. And while I think about it, how do large beasts like horses and cows live on only grass and a few buttercups? And they don't even sleep that much.

The children and I are quite excited about horses at the moment. Our neighbour has taken us, two Sundays in a row, in her rusty volvo to the stables to the countryside where she volunteers. Apparently there are umpteen therapeutic reasons to care for and ride horses, physical and mental, and this place is for disabled riders only. We go in the tack room to read the diary and admire the saddles, the children try on the hats. It smells of leather and damp.

Out in the fields, the eight well-behaved horses live in pairs in fenced-off areas. The white boss one (with different coloured eyes) has a bad back and needs a soft saddle. One needs medicine for a sore shin, and one will only let my neighbour feed him. There's a cute little black one, and one that swaps horsey-lip kisses for carrots. The new black one gets pushed around by the feisty one, and there's one with honey-coloured hair. Each day the horses get a few pieces of carrot, a handful of "Happy Hoof" feed, and garlic. And they sure do eat an awful lot of grass.

14 comments:

  1. I think I may be half-panda! blogthatmamax

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  2. I think our cats may be part Panda ..

    Horses are indeed therapeutic ...


    :-Daryl

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  3. I think this was a very lovely post! Was the photo one of the six?

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  4. B, me too!

    D, I think most cats are especially when they've got a favourite warm spot

    M, no, sadly, it's just some random (handsome) horse.

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  5. Stick to the Pandas, horses bite, kick and cost A FORTUNE!!!
    They are lovely though!
    Or maybe my pigs are panda related, they sleep a lot....very lovely pets!

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  6. horsey-lip kisses!

    I love that. Horses are special.

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  7. Love horses - used to own one. I am left-handed and within a week he realised I opened gates in the opposite way from his previous owner. I had Simon for 20 years and never fell off. He used to wander on his own, after a ride, down to the house and peer through the kitchen window where my mother was waiting with a carrot. He would then wander back again hoping his stable was ready and waiting. He was a very gentle giant.

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  8. That sounds like a wonderful way to spend a Sunday, and what different personalities. I was lucky enough to ride a few times when I was younger, and they are very majestic creatures. I wonder what the garlic is for?!

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  9. Yes, I don't think they are the brightest x

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  10. So maybe the next time I've got insomnia I should try eating some bamboo branches! It seems to do the trick for the pandas! :)

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  11. My daughter takes riding lessons. Her instructor stables rescue horses, formerly used in races/shows. They're so beautiful it's hard to see why anyone would give them up.

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  12. It's lovely that you have introduced your children to horses. They take a lot of looking after so it's a good way to learn responsibility. It also gets them out in the fresh air, I think too many kids spend far too long with computer games now. Will you take up riding? Debs x

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  13. Around here they have something called equine therapy. A colleague of my daughter had a son who kept getting into trouble, and she took him for equine therapy. She said that taking care of the large, beautiful animal built his self-esteem and was calming to him. I find that just wonderful, the simplicity of it.

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  14. are the riders disabled or is it the horses? It sounds a lovely place, though...when we lived in England I took my boys to Penn for riding lessons (In Bucks)and they learned how to muck out stables as well which was a good thing for boys to learn since their rooms often resembled a sty or a stable!loved this
    Sandi

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