Thursday 21 August 2014

I have just got back from taking the pigs for a walk..... Yes, you heard correctly. I am now officially the Mad Pig Woman. I gave them a practise run yesterday with a bag of sliced bread and didn't let them out of their stable until the evening, as they are a bit like chickens and like to sleep in the same place every night I was hoping that if they did run away they would have less time to get into trouble. Anyway, last evening was just a quick stroll, down to the orchard and back, bribing them with white bread, which they love and then when they followed me back to their stable I gave them bread and milk as a reward.  This evening they hooned around like complete lunatics but as soon as I called them they came back and followed me around the field. After about twenty minutes they galloped on ahead of me and when I got back to the stables somewhat concerned that they had gone straight up the drive, but to my relief they were standing in their stable by their bowl waiting for their bread and milk. Bless them, hopefully we have cracked it.
They are great for stress as the last two days have been ridiculously frustrating.. As mentioned before we were in negotiation over another two very nice horses in Ireland and we had finally agreed on a price (It was less for two, so a bargain!) We wanted them back in time for the open day so as soon as they were vetted I tried to do the transfer online as the bank wouldn't do it over the phone. To cut a long story short it wouldn't allow me to do the transfer and after repeated attempts the Bank of Scotland decided to suspend our account. Since they have merged with Lloyds the customer service is appalling and I simply could not speak to a human being to find out why. When I finally did they passed me onto someone else who took half an hour to answer the phone and was equally clueless, who would then pass me onto some other dopey person and so on.. This went on all day yesterday and most of the day today. The deadline for paying was 12 noon as the vendor didn't know us he understandably wasn't going to release the horses until there was proof of payment and the lorry was in the yard waiting to pick them up whilst I was on the phone tearing my hair out with frustration because I was still unable to talk to anyone who could help. Just us the lorry was about to leave at 12.55 (he had given me an extension until 1 pm) I finally managed to get help and get the payment through. Phew. My firm believe after today is that the stress caused by computers and lack of human contact is going to be a major cause of premature death in the future. Nowadays you can't even go on holiday and 'get away from it all' as people will still e-mail and expect an instant response. Added to that my e-mails stopped working and I couldn't proof read the open day programme. Grrrr! Anyway, it was all sorted out in the end and the pigs and puppies have cheered me up considerably. Hopefully, all being well the horses will be with us tomorrow afternoon.
In the meantime the other two new recruits are settling in really well and are already beginning to fill out a bit. They look a bit leaner than we would have liked but we got them from a yard where we knew we could massively improve them, and they have both showed considerable promise for young horses.