The day off for everyone at Thordale so off we went to see Les Girls in Sandness – the fillies and mares.

No day with Les Girls is complete without a huge Zoot-ing (or Moose as she was renamed today).  She was everywhere, determined to barge past or get in the way – she is very good at that particular skill.  I used her as a sofa to rest my bum on.  She didn’t mind.  She is a substantial little girl.

The youngsters (Zoot, Carina, Lyra and Gwendolinda)  were into everything.

We were perpetually loved whether we wanted to be or not.

Lyra still loves her Daisy and takes huge liberties with her.  She would never do this to anyone else.  Very sweet.  It was lovely watching them together.  I wish Daisy would take her away to St Snotworts University.  It would be something different at any rate.

This is an easy herd of mares/fillies.  You just go in, pick who you want to work with and then talk to them.  A great place for sitting and being surrounded by beautiful Shetland ponies.

But Lyra will always love her Daisy.  No one else.

The Minions are enjoying the summer at Thordale (before their knackers come off – shhhh, don’t tell them!)  Their day can be summed up with Eat, Play or Love (with occasional sleeps).

So there is the eating part.  The boys take this very seriously.  It could almost be a full-time job.

Then there is the playing.  They love playing and cannot walk anywhere without having fun.

And lastly, they love.  They love me, obviously, and they love Daisy who spends much time scratching and hugging them.

BeAnne is making friends too.  She is being surprisingly tolerant for her.

It is lovely seeing them like this.

So cuddly.

Silver is still a bit shy of us but I make sure we have one-on-one time together and he is learning to trust us. I think all the pulling of the fur has upset him and he has convinced himself that we only want to talk to him to do this.  Poor love.  Soon all the tats will be gone and hopefully he will, as we say in Shetland, “come out”, i.e. come out of himself.

Still, he has his friends and the summer is long.

It can take time to learn to smile again.

When Iacs and Haakon go out together, they have a little private conversation about when they want turn round to go home.  We always ignore this conversation and make them go on.

Apparently, though, I am only a passenger on my own horse – so I have heard.

Today, Daisy and I decided to conduct an experiment to show the extent of our passive riding abilities.

Look – no hands!

Yup, and me too!

Daisy re-arranged Iacs’ mane so we could see his ear transmitters.  It all works through the ears.

We will be going along perfectly happily when Iacs will flick his ear back, whereupon Haakon will reply.  If we ignore it, both Haakon and Iacs will make a circle/pirouette and suddenly we are facing the opposite direction going home very fast.

Usually we stop this stunt before it happens but today, fuelled by the passenger remark, we wanted to see when the independent thought would occur.

If you watch the film, you will see it happens twice.  The first is because there was a car which meant the horses wanted to ambulance-chase – total apologies to the driver who must’ve thought he being pursued by the Nazgûl.  And then there was a bolt for home at the end of the ride.

Ok, we can do this because there are very few cars about and once the horses turn for home  we turn them back and make them go on, albeit grumbling.

We came to the conclusion that if we rode as passengers, we wouldn’t actually get anywhere.  I think not.  To ride our horses, you have to have input and to anyone who thinks we are sacks of potatoes on horseback, I invite you to come and ride Haakon or Iacs.

Take your pick.

The horses move fields all year round.  We have 50 acres split into 3 smaller paddocks and 2 large ones.  There is other land 4 miles away but this is where I live.

Clothie is a separate croft of 5 acres across the hill from Thordale.  Ever since I had the ditches dug a few years back, there has a bad ragwort problem.  We have been weeding and spraying it for many years.   The digging disturbed the dormant seeds and up they sprout like demented triffids.

Every year, we take bin bags and go round and round the field trying to get rid of the bastard stuff.

Both Daisy and Flossie are brilliant at helping me as it kills my back.  We then take it all back to Thordale and burn our weeding efforts.

Hateful stuff.

Sometimes we spray but chemicals are expensive, you have to leave the field empty while it works.  The spray can be random too, often hitting other beautiful flowers which saddens me.  I always feel very blessed to have so many lovely orchids and to spray them by mistake is just plain wrong.

Sitting in this field, surrounded by such natural beauty always takes my breath away.

The field is thick with these pretty flowers.

But the ragwort is a constant summer battle which returns every year.  The dogs (and even cat sometimes) come with us and enjoy pottering about looking for pesky wabbits.  

Everyone loves Clothie.  Someimes the workers are found skiving off.

But it is heaven lying in the flowers looking up at the blue sky.