Jenifer Tucker's blog

One of the pleasures for me working at the Sanctuary, is that I get to meet a lot of very nice people who come and visit. By chance, I took a photo of a donkey called Little Bill when I helped out one weekend in our Isolation Unit last year. Shortly afterwards, his previous owner contacted me by email to say she'd seen his photo on the website. Since then, we have been in contact regularly and today it was a pleasure to meet Lisa and her family who were down for the weekend to spend some time with Little Bill.

I'm currently reading "A Cornish Summer" by Derek Tangye, and having just read a passage in the book, was reminded of the times when one of my own donkeys, Jack, used to help line the nests of birds. I often saw crows sitting on Jack's back, which he didn't mind at all. When his thick winter coat started to shed, I would groom him for hours and collect his hair by the bucket load, which I then used to tip upside down and leave in piles around the paddock - instead of sand castles, there were hair castles!

This morning I was off to Hannigan's Farm with a list of donkeys to take photos of for the next newsletter for Ireland. It got off to a good start ... the sun was shining!

While walking round Fort Walk here at the Sanctuary in Ireland I found a bench to sit on beside a group of four mules. Talk about being in the right place at the right time...

This is a day I've been looking forward do ... I'm off to visit our Sanctuary in Ireland to meet the staff and donkeys. I'm travelling with Mal Squance, our Deputy Chief Executive, who will be meeting the new head of operations, Noel Carton.

As snow falls heavily over most of the UK today, the donkeys received their first sprinkling of snow this afternoon. I've just taken a walk around the Sanctuary and didn't see any donkeys out in their paddocks. Instead they are all tucked up warm inside their stables ... who can blame them! The only donkey that you could just about see was our chalk donkey on the hill.