A rather eventful few days - (still no baby yet, by the way) Yesterday was particularly traumatic - All the horses were ridden out in the morning as usual and Doug and Will had gone fencing. Becky had gone for her normal lunchtime ride on Dream, They have been tootling about together for a number of months and Becky's riding has come on in leaps and bounds. Anyway, around about 1 pm my phone rang and it was Becky in absolute hysterics - all I could gather was that she had fallen off and that she thought Dream was dead in the ditch - as you can imagine, I hit the panic button, phoned Doug, asked Marcian, (our new Polish mucker outer) to come with me and drove off at breakneck speed, dreading what I was about to face - we got to the road opposite our drive (the Welsh Rd) and saw that the traffic had stopped and there was a few people standing looking down - I will never forget what I saw next - there was Dream lying sideways in the ditch with her head folded under her neck - she was motionless, and if it hadn't been for the fact that she was making groaning noises I would have been sure that she was dead. It was quite clear that she wasn't going to last much longer how she was lying as she was struggling to breath and we knew that we would have to pull her head around, I was really worried about this as I knew that the chances were that she had already fractured her neck and pulling it straight would almost certainly break it completely but we had no choice - We phoned the fire brigade and the vet but time wasn't on our side, we had to do something - Alistair Thorneycroft had stopped when he saw the accident, and he confirmed that we had no choice but to try and haul her head around, so the three of us tugged and pulled, and eventually her head came around, and thank goodness, she was still alive and started to breath more easily - I was still very worried that she hadn't moved and quite sure that she had either broken her back or her neck - Doug then turned up on the scene and looked very grim when he saw her, I knew he was thinking the same as me - He decided, with help from Will and Marcian, to pull her around, using her tail, so that her hind legs weren't pointing upwards to make it easier for her to get up if she was inclined - which at that stage she most certainly wasn't. In the meantime, Becky was sitting on the side of the road, absolutely sobbing her heart out convinced that Dream was dead. Then - the most wonderful thing happened, Dream moved her legs a little, realised that she could move and then with much groaning and grunting managed to haul herself to her feet to much applause. What unimaginable relief - she was very sore and walked like a crab, but most importantly she was still alive and when the vet checked her over and gave her an Xray, he couldn't believe how she had got away with it and how tough she was - He thinks she may have a fracture in her neck, but with time it will heal. Thank goodness - I then took Becky to be checked out in A & E who was feeling very sore, and got the whole story from her, apparently, she was just on her way back from a lovely ride when she passed the woods going down the hill when a new pigeon scarer went off - it is incredibly loud, more like a cannon, and Dream, who is half blind, has got very sensitive hearing, was seriously spooked and she set for home, Becky bailed out and Dream then jumped the massive hedge at a forty five degree angle, landing with her front feet in the ditch and then flipping right over. All in all we were incredibly lucky that no one, equine or human was badly hurt.

Everything else seems pretty tame after that, but today I went hunting with an old friend, Sharon, who now lives in Gloucester but used to live locally at Brockhall. The meet was at Lord Wimbourne's 'pad' at Ashby St Ledgers and it was good to see some of the Pytchley lot again. I had intended to have a really good days jumping on Dream, but had to take Oaka instead, who was lovely but I had to be a little careful on him, and Sharon went on Leon, who as usual had a wonderful time.