My new dog

Zippy is getting better and better! He is so in my good books for his latest improvement - he comes to call, and he drags Jazz in with him. Since they have been turned out full time, I have had to walk right to the bottom of the field to bring the pair of them in. Over the last couple of weeks Zippy has begun to trot up to me when he sees me. The last two days, he has appeared a couple of minutes after being called, so he was right down the field as usual and came in because he was called. I'd pay for that trait in a horse :-)

The other thing I have forgotten to tell you about before is his ears :-) I don't think I've ever had a horse with ears quite like it. Sitting on his back, they are almost all bronze colour, except for a half inch edge around the top half, which is jet black. The two colours don't meld together, one moment the hair is bronze and then the next, in a sharp line, the hair is black. It's very fetching :-)

I took him out for a half hour hack and he had a great deal more energy than the last time. Whatever bug he had was mild and short-lasting. He was a bit "bambi" - eyes on stalks and legs not quite falling in a predictable pattern, but nothing exceptional for three years old. The deer were out, which he ignored. But he was getting jittery about a noise which sounded like some ground nesting birds trying to warn something away from their nest - a sort of angry, very high pitched squealing. I looked hard to see what it was and couldn't see any birds. Then I spotted a movement in the grass in the field that we were passing. It was two stoat kittens play fighting - rolling over and over in a ball of flashing red and white, splitting up, running one after the other a few feet and then back into a tumble again. They were delightful - they grow up into vicious little creatures but they are so attractive!

When we were nearly home we were nearly wiped out by a pedal cyclist tearing down a 1 in 5 hill around a blind 90 degree bend (the road is called The Anker because it is anchor shaped at the bottom and that's the old English spelling) . He must have been doing 40 mph at least (66kph) and his path around the corner was bang on the line for Zippy's legs. He had to do a very hasty and dangerous wobble to avoid us and nearly threw himself and his bike all over the road. He did have the grace to look back and ask if we were OK as he rode away, but really, if we'd been a car instead he'd have been a bonnet mascot!

I took Jazz out in the oppposite direction. He's been this way once before and I expected him to be worse the second time as he scanned for differences from the first time to make a fuss about. He was worse, but in the end he behaved pretty well and suppressed his anxiety. I could feel that he was uncomfortable about going further away from home, but there was only one sticky moment caused by a sheep rubbing on a gate. He whipped around, but he did turn back and carry on quite easily.

An early half mile of this route is a fairly wide, straight piece of road used as a short cut. The traffic on it is infrequent but very fast. I was wearing my L plates and today everyone was courteous, and Jazz was very good. We were even passed by a lorry loaded with tree surgeon
stuff and towing a large wood chipper, which he hardly even looked at. All in all, I felt that the ride showed that he was really growing up. We finished by trotting back up that down piece, half a mile of solid uphill trot. He made it easily, so he's getting a lot fitter too.

I'm still smiling about how darned marvellous he was yesterday.

C