Rambler

Rambler.

A shetland in distress call came in from a concerned member of the public about this pony who was living right beside a busy motorway.  It was winter and the pony was spending his days standing in a frozen field with nothing to eat and no visable supply of water.  He had had a companion but she had died earlier in the winter giving birth to a foal which was also dead.  The owners were contacted and agreed to give the pony up and a trailer was despatched to collect this very thin and unhappy pony.  What struck us most when he arrived here was his smell, he smelt dreadful and we thought it was maybe his unhappiness oozing out of him!  He was thin and full of worms and his coat was matted and of course he was a stallion.  We named him Rambler because it seemed to suit him and we thought the name he arrived with was too agressive.  He was wormed immediatly and groomed and soon began to put on weight and to drive our mares crazy.  It was the wrong time of year to castrate because of the frost on the ground but we we simply had to go ahead and do it so that the wee chap could be intergrated with the rest of the herd.  Once he had got over his operation, gained weight and started looking like a pony instead of a bedraggled wreck it became evident that this pony was not only very attractive to look at but had great presence and was a lovely mover, one of our volunteers taking this on board decided Rambler would like to go to shows and so far in the summer of 2010 he has attended two shows and gained a fifth and a special rosette.  He needs to learn ring manners and not prance about and chew his handler or his lead rope while waiting for the judge!!  Watch this space for Rambler in the show ring updates.

After we lost our beloved pony Breezer Rambler moved in with our other shetland Tommy as company, they get on very well together though we think Rambler probably bores Tommy in the evenings with his tales of his show career!!  Rambler is a very people friendly pony and we may even break him in for riding though he will never leave Mossburn.

Kim
Kim is a 15hh, 28 year old thoroughbred cross arab/welsh mare, she is black except for those bits on her that are going grey! Kim came to live with us as her owner can no longer keep her due to work commitments, twice she has put her out on loan and both times has been less than happy with Kim's condition. We tried hard here at Mossburn to find Kim a good home but nobody wanted her because of her age and when we lost our lovely mare Maddison we decided to give Kim the home she needed. The people who did not want to take this mare on have well and truly lost out, not only has Kim got the nicest of natures and temprements she is also a willing and easy ride, totally sound and adored by everyone here who has met her. Kim's early days were spent in a riding school and it was at the riding school that her owner met and fell in love with her and eventually bought her. Kim is now owned by Mossburn but is still visited by her previous owner who is also assisting with her upkeep. When Kim arrived here from her last loan home she was on the thin side and extremely badly shod but those matters are easy to deal with and Kim has now become a happy and integrated part of the horse "herd" here.

Tommy
This picture is of Tommy, who arrived with us on 19th September 2003 when we removed him from a farm shed where he had been, with limited daylight, since being dragged from his mother at the Penrith sales two and a half months previously. The farmer owner of the shed informed us that the pony was wild and his new owner, having paid £20 for him for her children, could not get near him but did not bother to come and feed and water him every day anyway.

We had to manhandle poor Tommy out of that shed and into our trailer and only had a brief look at his mouth - at most we estimated him to be two years old at that time but in all probability he was still a yearling. He was a full colt of course which meant we had the expense of castrating him too.

On arrival at Mossburn Tommy was put in the small paddock which contains our round pen and his headcollar was left on, a practice of which we do not usually approve. Our old lady Midge was put in with him and he was delighted to see her and settled in quite quickly, lots of neighing going on to and from the rest of our ‘herd’! We then arranged for our animal behavourist, Judi Gunn, to come over and ‘speak’ to him with equine body language and after four hours were actually able to scratch his neck with our fingers. We are hopeful that, in time, Tommy will come to trust humans again.

Tommy has now struck up a close friendship with Breezer, who is a much more confident and trusting pony and we are hoping that she too will help him to rebuild his confidence. It would be a real achievement to win the trust of this pony without inflicting further trauma on him.

Breezer at Mossburn

Breezer
Breezer arrived here on the evening of Sunday 11th of July 2004 as a yearling Shetland filly with badly deformed hind legs. The condition is known as capped hock and hers is a really bad case. She came from a breeder who did not want her, because of her condition she cannot be bred with. He was asked specifically by our mutual vet not to offload her onto us as we had enough mouths to feed!

Her mother is called Bacardi which is why she was named Breezer. She is a wee character, very curious about everything and well able to canter about with the rest of our herd. Our other resident Shetland Tommy has taken to her and we hope that, through time she will give him more of an interest in life.

Connie
Connie was born in 1982 and is the pony that everyone wants to have, not only are her manners perfect but also she is very pretty. So what is she doing at Mossburn you might ask? Well Connie made a decision that although she did not mind travelling in a lorry there was no way she would load into a trailer. This was not good news for her owners at the time because they only had a trailer. It ended up that her rider could only take part in events which were within hacking distance of her home! The decision was made for them to buy another horse and Connie came to live with us. Juanita did eventually teach her to load into a trailer but there are two reasons why Connie was not offered up for adoption. Connie could easily be overworked, she would give you her heart if you asked for it - that’s one reason. The other is that she is so docile and quiet and yet forward going under saddle that she is the ideal pony for people with disabilities or who are nervous. Connie is worth her weight in gold to us and gold is nearly her colour, she is a very light chestnut. Her breeding is Arab cross Connemara and she is 14.2 hands high.

Connie when she arrived at Mossburn

Connie Mark2

This is Connie mark 2. Connie was living in a field of poor grazing with a ramshackle shelter beside a very busy main road on the outskirts of a village not too far from here, she was on her own and it did not appear as if anyone ever went near her, this was her situation for two years.  We started getting phone calls about Connie from people who were concerned about her plight and Juanita asked one of the callers if she could identify an owner for the mare which she did.  The owner was contacted and agreed that he did not want the mare which he had been given but also stated that he would not give but only sell her.  Juanita met the owner in Connie's field and agreed a price then came home and phoned all the people who had registered concern over the mare's plight and said now is the time to cough up!  The full price of £600 was raised quickly and easily and a trailer dispatched to bring Connie to Mossburn, catching her was difficult, getting a headcollar onto her was dangerous and loading her was easy, once headcollared she walked straight into the trailer.  Connie was so unsocialised having been on her own for so long that even on arrival here she still stood at a fence and gazed off into space taking little or no notice of the other horses around her, it was Silillia the mule who eventually forced her into accepting the fact she was now among her own kind and had better take note!  Since we acquired Connie we have learnt quite a bit about her past, she is in fact a pure bred Hackney Carriage Horse, used to pull a carriage round the streets of Aberdeen and was probably about 22 years old when he arrived here.  Connie is a strange old mare, she can be very diffficult to catch and she is not to be trusted not to kick, that was the problem when went to collect her but most of the time she is fine and once caught she is easy to handle.  Connie is a lovely ride, well behaved and traffic proof as one would expect of a carriage horse but being the breed she is cantering is not her thing and getting into canter can be quite difficult but then she doesn't really need to as she can keep up with the other horses in her exceedingly fast trot!

Blackie
Blackie is a middleweight cob, that is to say Blackie herself is rather portly and could be described as a heavyweight but her breeding is middleweight!  Blackie is the mare everyone wants to own, she can carry riders from very small because she is so well mannered right up to those on the larger size, thirteen stone, her manners are perfect, nothing bothers her.  Blackie was a much loved mare whose owner unfortuantly had a major breakdown and we took her in while the owner went into hospital, last year the lady signed Blackie over to us to ensure that she would spend the rest of her life being looked after and loved and never end up in the wrong hands.  Normally a 14hh weight carrying cob like Blackie would have been offered up for loan but as I value my life this is never going to happen, every one of the young volunteers here at Mossburn adores Blackie!  We are unsure of Blackie's age but she is thought to be in her late teens or early twenties.

The Carlisle Five
Issac one of the Carlisle 5 pictured opposite in his new home. Some years ago now Mossburn was contacted by a solicitor who asked if we could take in and keep together five horses belonging to a client of his who had died as a result of a traffic accident. The man had left a letter saying that in the event of his death the horses were to stay together. Juanita said that there was no way we could re-home five horses together and to telephone the two big horse charities.

Two days after the first call the solicitor rang back to say that without a legacy the charities he had contacted would not touch the horses. It was agreed that Mossburn would take them together, but would ultimately have to re-home them separately. What no one knew at the time was that all five of these horses had bad behavioural problems. In fact, two of them were downright dangerous... the biggest two of course. These animals had been owned by someone who honestly thought he was an animal lover, but once in his care they were neglected and allowed to have their own way whenever anyone went near them.

Sorting them out was a nightmare but we got there eventually and all five are now re-homed. It is very worrying to think of what would have happened to these lovely animals if we had not been here.

Sililia
As a mule her mother was a pony and her father a donkey. Sililia is much smaller than most mules being only about 12 hands high and is a wonderful dark brown chocolate colour. Sililia was about 9 years old when she arrived at Mossburn on the 27th of April 2002 with an elderly grey mare called Tanya. Their owner had sold his house and land and they were to be shot as he had nowhere else to put them. Fortunately for the pair somebody stepped in and asked if the animals could be saved if a home could be found, and that is how they came to be here.

We were told that Sililia had been broken in but this was patently untrue. She was very nervous on arrival here and it took a month before we could halter her. As she has gained confidence she has become inquisitive and enjoys being led around, looking at things and also being groomed. She has accepted a rider and goes out for hacks locally - she even assisted with 'pony rides' at a recent open day! She can still be difficult if she chooses - sometimes when being led she will stop dead and refuse to move (usually in the middle of a road!) - the saying "Stubborn as a mule" was not coined in jest!

Sililia is not keen on men, which does not make the farrier's job any easier, but she is improving in confidence all the time and becoming much easier to handle all round.