💰🐴 HAVE YOU EVER DONE A DRUG DEAL WITH A HORSE? 🐴💰

Have You Ever Done A Drug Deal With A Horse?

We’ve got eight horses here at our Sanctuary comprising of two donkeys, two minis, three draft horses and an Arab, all living out on two track systems, with the bigger horses roaming around roughly eight acres.

Otto is our 29-year-old Shire cross and one of the eldest members of the herd. He’s always been an exceptionally good doer, but he’s getting old, bless him, and these days he needs a bit of extra food, so he gets an additional bucket feed at breakfast time, which has turned into a comedy in itself.

🕵️ THE SECRET OPERATION BEGINS...

Firstly, it feels like I’m committing some sort of nefarious crime, like I’m taking part in a dodgy drug deal with a large draft horse, and it normally goes something like this…

I spot Otto up the hill and try to subtly get his attention without attracting the attention of the other three big horses.

👀 Even from several hundred metres away, he seems to understand exactly what’s going on and starts ambling towards me at base camp with an air of, “Nothing to see here, guys, I’m just going for a drink of water…”

He’s eager for his brekkie, I KNOW he’s eager, but he’s trying very hard to pretend he’s not because the last thing either of us needs is the other three looking up and thinking, “Ooh, where’s Otto going? LET’S ALL GO WITH OTTO.”

🤝 THE DEAL GOES DOWN...

Once he gets down the hill, our dodgy transaction can finally take place. I look left and right, then HE looks left and right, and at this point I feel like Otto should sidle up beside me, slip a brown paper envelope into my hand and mutter, “You didn’t get this from me.” I’d then give him a suspicious nod, we’d exchange an unnecessarily complicated secret handshake and I’d quietly usher him towards the pen while trying not to look like two people who are very obviously doing something they shouldn’t be doing.

Gate closes, bucket goes down, goods delivered. No witnesses. 😎

Or so we think…

🚨 WE HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED 🚨

Because the minis and donkeys live right next door. Ted, our little donkey, spots Otto eating and immediately starts braying at the absolute top of his lungs, then Blossom joins in. I don’t know whether you know much about donkeys, but I can tell you that their bray is MASSIVE and very, VERY loud, so now we have two of them going off and the cat is well and truly out of the bag. 📢🫏🫏

Any hope of secrecy is gone. At this point we might as well have a flashing police beacon above the pens saying:

🚨 WEE ORRR! WEE ORRR! 🚨

🚨 OTTO IS BEING FED! 🚨

🚨 WEE ORRR! WEE ORRR! 🚨

Subtle.

🐎💨 HERE COME THE HGVs...

And sure enough, within a breath the other three big horses come thundering down the hill absolutely OUTRAGED.

Now, for context, Reuben is 17.2hh, weighs about 850kg and is built like a truck. Cleo is around 18hh, built like a tank and is the heaviest horse on the entire property, possibly in New Zealand at this rate. She is affectionately nicknamed HGV, which stands for Heavy Goods Vehicle.

Between the pair of them, I’m fairly confident they could survive the apocalypse and emerge three months later wondering what all the fuss was about.

And yet one tiny bucket of breakfast goes into Otto’s pen and apparently I have committed the ultimate act of betrayal.

💔 REUBEN DISCOVERS HE’S OUT OF THE WILL...

Reuben takes it the hardest. His enormous bottom lip comes out and he looks at me as though he’s just discovered he’s been written out of the will and Otto’s getting the house.

For the next 12 hours I’ll get the cold shoulder and that wounded look every time I go near him, just to make absolutely certain I understand the gravity of what I’ve done.

Unless, of course, I turn up with a bucket, in which case forgiveness will be immediate and unconditional. 😂

🚧 CLEO ATTEMPTS A ROBBERY...

Cleo doesn’t bother with emotional blackmail. She goes straight to attempted burglary and starts trying to rip the gate off its hinges so she can get into the pen and seize the evidence herself.

When that fails, she moves on to

telekinesis. 🧠✨

She stands about five metres away staring so intensely at Otto’s bucket that she appears to be physically WILLING it towards her, basically trying to vacuum breakfast across the pen using nothing but the power of her mind.

And then, miraculously, Otto nudges the bucket slightly in her direction.

Cleo’s face LIGHTS UP.

IT’S WORKING. 😳

All her dreams are coming true. The universe has heard her. The bucket is moving. She’s practically tasting it now.

Then I walk into the pen and kick it straight back towards Otto.

The look on her face. 😐

If a horse could report a human being to the authorities, she’d be filling in the paperwork by lunchtime.

🎭 CASPER REVIEWS THE PRODUCTION...

Casper is standing slightly further back looking like an indignant choreographer who’s just watched the entire cast get the routine completely wrong.

He’s not trying to demolish anything. He’s just standing there judging the entire debacle.

“Excuse me? Otto gets breakfast and I don’t? Frankly this entire production is a shambles.”

🫏 TED CHOOSES VANDALISM...

Ted, meanwhile, has moved on from sounding the alarm and is now literally chewing the mesh on the gate, trying to work out whether he can open the thing and conduct his own raid.

🥺 AND THEN THERE’S MISSY...

Then there’s Missy. Missy is only six hands high, so she’s absolutely tiny, and she’s just standing there looking up at me through enormous doe eyes, silently guilt tripping me with every fibre of her very small body.

“Please, sir, can I have some more?”

She hasn’t actually had any in the first place, but apparently we’re not going to let facts interfere with a strong Oliver Twist performance. 😂

🌾 MEANWHILE...

Blossom has largely lost interest and gone back to her hay, while Oscar couldn’t care less because he has hay and, as far as Oscar is concerned, the catering arrangements are perfectly satisfactory.

And suddenly one small bucket for an elderly horse has become a giant conspiracy about how I clearly love Otto more than everybody else.

Before anybody starts feeling sorry for this apparently neglected rabble, there is ad lib hay available ALL THE TIME in slow feed haynets literally just behind them, plus grass to pick at all the way around the track.

Nobody is even remotely close to starving.

Try telling THEM that. 🙄🐴

☕ AND TOMORROW MORNING...

The worst of it is, I’ve got to do it all over again tomorrow. 😂

There is never a dull day with horses is there-lol...but we wouldn't have it any other way 😍🐴