Colds, Lambs, a Donkey and the Green Bearded Horse Stampede
Living in the middle of nowhere has one great advantage - we hardly ever get colds. But the downside is that whenever I go abroad in the winter months... the cold germs set upon me the moment I reach the first big town. This time I thought I'd try Echinacea but the combination of train germs, Parisian metro germs, Dublin germs and aeroplane germs were too strong and I've been coughing and blowing my nose for three weeks.

On the plus side, the lambs are all doing well. We've had to feed one of the triplets who wasn't getting as much milk as her sisters. But she's now caught them up in size and speed. It's amazing to see nine day old lambs leaping off the top of four feet high boulders.

Then there was the donkey... We thought we'd do a good deed and arrange for our blacksmith to trim the feet of a donkey that's being kept on one of our neighbour's fields. The donkey's feet were terrible - so overgrown he couldn't walk right. So, on Saturday we set off to collect him, walk him back the half mile to our stable where he could have his feet trimmed without dragging the blacksmith all over the field.

As usual it started off fine. Shelagh caught him, slipped a headcollar over his head and led him out the field. The rest should have been easy as previously he'd been easy to lead. Then he saw our horses and everyone got excited. Our two horses whinnied and galloped and the donkey bounced and brayed. And turned, suddenly, setting off towards a track on the side of the road. A muddy track. Shelagh tried to pull him back, failed and fell over. And ... refused to let go of the lead rein.

There was some dragging - of the horizontal, stomach surfing kind. Mud was involved and at least one puddle.

Ten minutes later we managed to get the donkey into the stable. Not so good news about Shelagh's coat - which was drenched and slightly ripped. But cue happy ending. The donkey can now walk properly and Shelagh gets to buy a new coat.

Finally - and just to show what an action packed week it was last week - there was the stampede. Another of our neighbours was moving his young cattle from one field to another and, to do so, he had to use the road that adjoins our fields. This is not usually a problem. The road has little traffic and the farmer has his family at the front and back of the herd to keep order.

And what order - never had there been such a well-behaved herd of cows. They formed an orderly line, two abreast, ambling slowly past.

Until Saffron - our almost 17 hands French Trotter - saw them. She's fascinated by cattle and gets excited. And when a giant excitable horse gets excited, they get Excited with a capital E. She stopped what she was doing - eating large amounts of grass - and charged out of the woods.

This had an adverse effect on the young cattle. One, they hadn't seen Saffron before as she'd been hidden amongst the trees. Two, she was galloping towards them at great speed. And, three, she had a large green beard - a clump of grass that she'd torn off ready to chew before the cattle fever struck.

Stampede! The road was turned into Pamplona with fewer people and more cattle. Humans jumped into ditches, called out, squashed themselves against hedges. Cattle ran and bucked and bellowed. Saffron galloped, bucked and farted.

Luckily the stampede didn't last for long as the herd turned into a track away from the road and once out of sight of the terrifying green bearded monster they calmed down. Equally luckily was Saffron's clever green-bearded disguise. Because of it she's unlikely to be picked out of a police line-up:)