in play-fighting with the donkey, to the extent that both of them
have ripped each other's covers to shreds and they are now more
or less useless regardless of whether they fit or not.
After a brief consultation with my mother and neighbour as
to how to proceed, I armed myself with a slice of vogels and
proceeded to catch the pony. Which, when written sounds like a
simple exercise and I wish it was as short and simple as it was
made to sound in that sentence.
After tying him to the fence post (yes, the same one he bent
before, I was hoping he'd jerk it back into place if I tied him
to the other side) I began by holding the nice new rug under his
nose. He obligingly snotted all over it. Folding it up into a tube,
I progressed to rubbing the soft, inner lining along his neck, to
soothe him into the feel of it as per mum's advice (thanks mum).
He pulled the fence post back into place, but that was my only
success, because it was at that point the wind picked up and it
started to spit. Needless to say, Felix was not a happy chappy.
Given the water sliding down my own neck, I knew I couldn't
leave him to face the storm with a bare bum, so there was no
option but perseverance. I tried to do it the way mum, neighbour
Jane, and my `Horses for Dummies' book suggested keep the
rug in contact with his skin, move it along the neck, over the
shoulder, and up onto the back. After the first hour he was all
right with the neck and shoulder, possibly because if he strained
his head at a stupid angle he could still see it. It was irrational,
but I'll admit to a bit of an inward-panic that the wind would
change and his neck would get stuck like that. Maybe it was the
stress of the moment, but it's possible I was just a very gullible