It has been the New Forest Show this week. Living on site, this has caused a few complications. Beauty’s big field is used as a car park for the show, so she obviously couldn’t be in there – with 100,000 people driving and wandering through. The problem is, Beauty has very fixed ideas about how she spends her days. In the morning, she likes to stand under a particular tree with Abbey, the big grey horse in the neighbouring field. In the afternoon, she likes to graze down at the bottom of the big field. Any attempts to keep her in the small paddock behind the house are fairly futile. She just walks through electric fencing. Although, to be fair, it hasn’t been electrified up until now.
So I was pulling my hair out trying to work out what to do with her in the weeks leading up to the show. I considered post and railing the 30ft section between the two paddocks, but the ground is baked hard at the moment and I don’t fancy my chances of getting posts in the ground. It would probably be fairly pointless even if it were possible – as there is a long stretch of dodgy fencing down the long side of the field. Day to day she respects that fence line, but I didn’t want to put it to the test when the stakes were so high. It would be incredibly dangerous for her to get loose in the New Forest Show car parks. She could get out on to the main road far too easily – or out onto open forest.
Fortunately, the very lovely Pat (my neighbour and hotel manager) arranged permission from the New Park Hotel for Beauty to stay in the beautifully fenced (all post and rail!) mini paddock behind our houses. It was the perfect solution. So she has spent show week in a very safe but small paddock. She was perfectly happy though. She got two big feeds a day and loads of hay, so she spent the week happily munching and watching all the madness of the show trundle past her field.
The highlight of the show for Beauty was when Becky came to see her. Becky had been a major part of her rescue, back on 3rd September last year. Becky found her at the same time Shari and I did. Becky spent the whole afternoon clamped around Beauty’s neck, keeping her safe til I could dash of, get money from the bank and get back to liberate her from the grotty gypsy dealer who was planning to “get her throat cut” the next day. (Grrrr!!!!! Yep – I am struggling with a few forgiveness issues there!)
Becky hasn’t seen Beauty for ages, so it was beautiful to see her share a lovely cuddle with Beauty. Photos below…
I had been thinking of Becky and Beauty this week and decided that she would be the perfect person for me to leave Beauty to in my will. Not that I am planning to pop off any time soon, but I feel happy knowing I have worked out solutions for good homes for my animals. (I want Laura the trimmer to have TigerLily and Ruby to have Zee. If Ruby can’t cope with the responsibility, Laura should be asked next. If she can’t take two, then the best person to have Zee would be Sarah Weston – if she is up for it!)
So I asked Becky to be Beauty’s Godmother whilst she was giving her a hug 
I am certain she would love and care for Beauty for the rest of her days, if anything happens to me. Thank you Becky!
