May - a month in transition

Manjeev passed his Monty Roberts exam

Manjeev & Libbie

The month of May was quite unusual (although nothing seems to be ‘usual’ around our neck of the woods). Manjeev left for the US at the start of the month to go to the Monty Roberts school in California and prepare for his advanced exam. We were all VERY jealous that he got to escape the miserable heat but also felt sad he’d have to be all alone without us and work very hard to pass his exam...which he did! The exam is very tough and has several phases, including ‘gentling’ a wild horse, putting a saddle and long lining a green horse for the first time in one session as well as various theoretical papers. In addition, Manjeev had to present his projects to Monty Roberts himself to explain how he was planning on using his methods to better the welfare of horses. After all that preparation it was a huge relief and pride that he managed to pass the exam. To top it, Manjeev is the first Asian ever to reach that level of training under the Monty Roberts exam. Quite a feat!

When 36C isn’t too bad

Early morning exercise (for some)

May is one of the worst months of the year temperature-wise, although this year was not too bad. As a matter of fact, we were all thinking that our bodies had adapted rather well to the weather only to find out that indeed May had been unusually cool. It still reached about 36-37C though, so not too easy either!

We lost Merlin

One who did, very sadly, succumb to the heat was our 3-year old male cat Merlin. He had followed us from the UK and had settled quite well into this second Indian summer. We are not sure what went wrong, except that one day we came home to find him sitting in a corner dead. He was so young and seemed in very good health so it was a real shock. We just hope that whatever it was, it wasn’t painful.

A friend of ours who owns a farm in South Africa once told us ‘When you have livestock, you automatically have deadstock.’ It didn’t really resonate at the time but now that we’ve lost a few of our animals over the years it makes sense. None of our animals is livestock, of course, but what it means is that when there is life there is death, and when there are many lives there is, well, more death too.

Death always makes one appreciate life more and Merlin’s passing was no exception. Our animals bring us so much joy and sometimes we take it for granted. We will try to make a special effort to remind ourselves of that!

Speed & Rey became best friends

Our little Speedy looking good 

Libby keeping an eye on Speed & Luci's exercise

Our new recruit, the old thoroughbred Speed, seems to have settled in well. We have changed the stables around so now she is between Libbie and Rey. Speed and Rey have become very good friends. They spend the whole day with their heads next to each other at the front corner of their stables. Once in a while, Rey makes a fuss, pretending Speed is being mean to her but we know it’s nonsense.

Adjusting to having an older horse in our stables has been an interesting phase. We are so used to these excited little things, but good old Speed is slow and has arthritis so we need to take it easy. It’s important that she continues to exercise, however, and we keep that in mind. She’s put on quite a bit of weight and looks really nice.