Tiny pony in trouble

[bunn]

Yesterday evening when walking hounds I almost fell over a very young foal (maybe a few days?) who was on his own and in a very bad way, not able to stand, obviously distressed and covered in flies. 

I phoned the emergency number on the park gate, and got a confused lady in Truro, who (after a long delay where I hung about while the hounds whinged about how it surely must be teatime by now) passed me to Cornwall Council Animal control, who (after another long delay when the hounds appeared to have given up hope of ever going home and went to sleep on the grass)  passed me to the RSPCA, who said they would make it a priority case, leave it to them.

  I was rather expecting them to call me back for more directions, but they didn't - however, the foal was gone this morning, and I'm pretty sure he wasn't in a state to walk out of there, so someone must have taken him.  I hope he is OK.

Comments

[demon-rum.livejournal.com]

I always thought the RSPCA was beyond awesome, but that's mostly gleaned from a childhood of reading Tintin and Enid Blyton books, and being in awe of anything with "Royal" in it.

Are these wild ponies just wandering around in parks? I'm rather fascinated by that.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

LOL - the RSPCA do a fair job on the whole, but they aren't very Enid Blyton!

They aren't wild ponies, they will have an owner of a sort, but in a fairly loose kind of way. Various farmers have grazing rights and the ponies live on the moors and breed without much intervention beyond keeping a record of which is whose - in theory they are all tagged and microchipped, though I'm slightly dubious about exactly how that can be checked... If they are lucky, the owner feeds them in the winter. They round them up in the autumn to count them and some of the young ones get sold then.

It's a rather old fashioned approach to horse keeping!

[demon-rum.livejournal.com]

I was going to respond to this like 11 days ago. Because I am a girl, therefore I am interested in horses. I do not understand why this is the case, but it's weirdly common.

Those sound like almost-wild ponies, and I am totally fascinated by them. There are nearly-wild ponies on islands off the coast of South Carolina, and wild mustangs in various national parks here, and the government is always trying to get rid of them because they supposedly eat all the plants and run around destroying the land with their hooves. Or whatever. So I'm really impressed that people can just leave ponies out on the moors and they don't all get shot from a helicopter or something.

(also, it turns out that even Enid Blyton wasn't very Enid Blyton.)