Blogs

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.

Now sitting in my hotel room in Delhi, writing up reports, and getting ready to travel by road to Sikar, in Rajasthan tomorrow (around 7 hours in a Tata car) with one of my favourite people, the taxi driver Sadagi. I'm going up there to run a two week harness making course for the local donkey owners, whose present harness causes massive wounds to the donkeys, not only inflicting the animals with what must be agonising pain, but also putting them in a position where they actually die, often from tetanus.

Last week both myself and Lady were in on a secret photo session as we were to star on the front of a birthday card. Our lovely groom, Emma, gave us a good brushing and even managed to remove all the straw tangled in my lovely long mane, so we were looking our best for the camera.

One of the roles of the Vet Projects Department is to provide feeding advice to donkey owners and keepers. We have had a busy few weeks with lots of calls coming through from owners of donkeys wanting to know how to feed their donkeys appropriately at this time of year. It is often during these months that elderly donkeys may struggle to maintain weight and need supplementary feeding.

At last, the sun is shining, so it's a good chance to nip out to see what’s going on around the Sanctuary during these winter months.

Last year I posted a blog about how we were joining in with other charities who had chosen the Drupal content management system (CMS) to drive their websites.