The office hasn't seen much of me this week as I have been out at Paccombe Farm making new four-legged friends and learning a lot about donkey health care with the help of my two glamorous and rather cuddly assistants - Wallace and Grommett.
The office hasn't seen much of me this week as I have been out at Paccombe Farm making new four-legged friends and learning a lot about donkey health care with the help of my two glamorous and rather cuddly assistants - Wallace and Grommett.
These two lovely donks are currently residing at Paccombe while waiting for a suitable foster home to become available. They while away their time munching, braying, strolling around the yard and helping to train some two-legged sources of entertainment how to look after them. This week I was one such source of entertainment - particularly as I had a rather tasty looking camera strung around my neck for much of it!
I was very greedy and had two grand days out with Wallace and Grommett and their friends, completing two of the free donkey care courses run by The Donkey Sanctuary. All the courses are free, and are particularly useful if you are or want to become a foster owner.
Day 1 was the popular Donkey Care Induction Day, which taught me and my course colleagues - some of whom were shortly to become foster owners - all about field and stable management and how to keep donkeys healthy and happy. Donkeys are such good teachers, and by the end of the day we had all got our hands dirty mucking out, grooming and picking out feet to their exacting standards. As a Quality Time Volunteer this was a great recap for me, and I am now confident that I could prepare five star accommodation and Michelin starred meals for Wallace and Grommett and their friends should they ever come to stay!
I returned the next day for the Donkey Health Care course. This, in a nutshell, was about first aid for donkeys and how to do everything possible to prevent them from needing it. As with humans, no matter how careful and vigilent you are, you cannot rule out donkeys feeling a little poorly from time to time, but this course was great in telling you what to look out for, when to call the vet and what to do until they arrive. All very useful stuff, and made all the more interesting by very obliging donkeys who were willing to have their feet bandaged, hooves trimmed and be generally poked and prodded all in the name of our education!
We all left with certificates and a whole lot of new knowledge, but they all deserve an extra cuddle and a gold star for being such amazing teachers.
