Floss came home yesterday after an arduous flight – thank you LoganAir for the blatant lies, disregard for your passengers while you wasted everyone’s precious time – from Edinburgh.  She is home to kindly look after the animals while I go to London next week with friends.

Fivla was of course thrilled to see her owner had come home.

Floss and Fivla have been together since they were both 3 years old.

This morning Lambie et al came rushing up to Flossie.  That is Lambie’s typical “I love her more than you” face which he does at me.  Ingrate, I told him as I went to get everyone’s breakfasts.

Then it was Monster’s turn to show is his love and appreciation of Flossie.  I think we can safely say he is not a huge Flossie fan because he only loves OH and Daisy.

And parmesan!

He definitely loves parmesan.

We did not know this.

This afternoon, I made up the fold-out bed in my shed as the house will be full when my friends arrive. I asked Floss to give it a try for comfort and Pepper jumped on too.

Lots of helping.  Pepper is fan of everyone, especially unsuspecting victims of being jumped on.

Despite Monster’s bad manners, (I’m sorry he was sitting on the kitchen table), we are all very pleased to have Floss home.

Everyone was hanging around the gate unaware that I had made the track bigger while they were eating their breakfast.  They only watched me move all the fence posts and do some serious maths with the electric wire (err…. wind it round the posts!)

So I popped a headcollar on Vitamin because she is still the herd leader and I knew (hoped) the ponies would all follow her to their new-to-them pasture.  I also shouted at them to follow.

First Albie followed and then others got the message.  They didn’t want to miss out on anything that someone else might be having and, yes, we have mud but it is not very deep and worth battling through to get to the better grass.

Tail-end Charlie – or Newt – was trotting to keep up.  He suddenly looked up and saw everyone had vanished.

Once they realised where they were and what I had done, everyone was very pleased.

Even Fivla perked up and thought this was much better than a day in the shed.

I want the old ladies to get into the routine of going out during the day and they can come back inside at night. I send them out after a big breakfast to keep their guts ticking over all the time.  Colic is my enemy.

Vitamin tucked into the grass and looked perfectly normal.

Actually, they all did, though possibly not the normal bit.

I like seeing the herd all back together again.  Being with everyone, is what gives Vitamin and Fivla their purpose in life.

Eating on your own can be very dull.

This morning the weather deteriorated and I gave in and fed the little hobbitses a second breakfast.

No one was shivering, which cheered me up, as we are still in double digits temperature-wise, but it was a mean gale-force north wind, which never helps.

Everyone was sodden and they huddled around their haynet stuffing their faces.

The hay was warming them and cheering them up too.

Silver had his own haynet. He doesn’t like sharing very much. It’s not his thing.  He’s not mean, he just likes some solitude (read peace and quiet) when eating.  And, oh the mud. The horrid mud.  It really is too much and it’s not even November yet.  Around the edge of this part of the field is hard-standing with mud on top.

After a well-deserved lunch for myself at the church café, I returned to see the ponies had discovered the new eating area that I had created by pulling the electric fence back a good piece.

As it had stopped raining (but still blowing hard), I made the decision to put Fivla and Vitamin outside to join their friends.  I am determined their life will not just be in the shed if I can get the balance right.

Later on, when I went out to check on everyone, Fivla saw me and came running so I hid hoping she would stay with her friends and eat the newly released grass, rather than wait at the gate to go back inside again.

Yes, I now have to hide from my ponies!

Up at at the crack of sparrows this morning.

I had to squeeze my usual morning routine into an hour and half.  I gave everyone enough food until lunch, although I know they ate it all immediately and then wanted more.  Tough. Things to see, people to do!

Driving the horsevan, I went to Lerwick to the Marts for the annual Shetland pony sales.

I tried so hard not to be tempted but there were some sweeties there.

Absolute sweeties.

Having seen the ponies I was supposed to look at and give an opinion on, I went “front of house” to sit in the centre of things. The bidding had already started.

Each breeder was asked to lead their ponies around the ring a few times and then to stand them up in the centre.

The bidding is live as well as onilne and you can see the camera in the corner.  There was good online interest and folk commented on the high quality of pony being presented for sale.

I can’t really comment on the prices realised because I have no idea what the market is like these days.

My friend, who I had come to give moral support, bought the pony she wanted – a gorgeous standard isles-bred black filly.

I am thrilled for her and there is something nice about not coming home with another but having all the fun and thrills of helping with the purchase.

I think OH was relieved too.  By the way, I only took the horsevan because I needed more hay!  I hope I didn’t scare you.

It’s a tough one, this keeping ponies inside 24/7 thing.  They struggle, therefore I struggle as well.

Fivla and Vitamin are losing the will, they are rapidly losing interest in all types of food as well as being noticeably down in the dumps. I hate seeing them like this.

So, as today was calm and relatively rain-free, I put them in with their friends, the Minions, after breakfast in the hope it would perk them up.

Fivla perked.  She was happy to eat but Vitamin just stood there and didn’t really bother.

At elevenses, I put out some soaked hay as there really is nothing to eat around here.

And I knew these two wouldn’t bother with it, so I gave them a ration of hay replacer (ie soaked mush) which they scoffed.

I opened up a little more of the track in the afternoon too.  It was a scrubby part.  Nothing nice.

And it was good to see Vitamin eating properly.

Everyone was happier and I thought I had it sussed.

But at 3pm, the old ladies were standing by the gate with the others miles away. So I opened the gate and they ran into the shed even without headcollars and started to eat all the food they’d left behind, much happier with life.

Farrier day is next Tuesday and I will make some decisions then based on what we find.  I don’t want to Fivla and Vitamin to give up because they are living inside but then again, I do want them to have some quality of life.  Mental health is just as important as physical health.