October 2019, one of the last happy, healthy times we had together. Larry has been gone 4 years. April 1st, 2020

The exhaustion is soooo worth it. My sweet, lovely boy. He will never know the neglect his mother (and her BFF Beryl) have known, not ever. 🥹🩶

I think it’s time for a ‘Bridle Shower’ for Amy and her new son. Vetting for both of them plus Amy’s cough/ fever antibiotics is adding up. Thankfully, everyone is doing well. Hay and feed plus Abner’s new shoes could also use some donations. Any amount is welcome, it adds up.

I shudder to think that one week ago she was in a kill pen. Praying that the neglect and stress this poor mare has suffered is not too much for her foal to overcome. She’s a daughter of Pleasantly Perfect and granddaughter of Mineshaft. Shame on whoever bred her then threw two lives away like garbage. Please help with a donation if you can.

Was not expecting the tears that came with the safe arrival of this precious boy. Thank you, @MargaretDammit. Thank you, Marlene @RACEFund. Thank you, everyone that helped get these mares to safety and made sure this foal was not born in a Texas kill pen. And to the industry that pretends they are a PR nuisance, including those who mean better but still shake fingers for bailing them…🖕

If you have just arrived and are wondering why so much of this account is given over to a bull, a ewe, a goat and a few other animals in fields you will never visit, stay a moment. There is a reason. These are the Ruminati. Each is a living argument doing an ancient job, and between them they dismantle most of what the modern world believes about food, land, and who is to blame for the planet. Gerald, a Hereford bull, has spent four years turning one corner of one field into wildflowers, and has never asked anyone to notice. Doris, a Texel ewe, knows fifty faces and forecasts the weather better than the BBC. She is the answer to anyone who calls the animals we eat stupid. Keith, an Anglo-Nubian goat, respects no fence in Devon and turns land no plough could touch into food. Eduardo, an alpaca, grows a fibre finer than cashmere on Welsh rain, and is guarding an orphan lamb that has decided it is a small strange alpaca. Freya, a European bison, is back on a hill her kind left six thousand years ago, raising a fox-coloured calf, Seren, who already leads the herd out in front of her. Marged, a Tamworth pig, turns an old orchard over with her nose and hands it back richer than she found it. Hector, a Cavalry Black, stood seventeen years for the Household Cavalry and has lately decided it is safe to lie down and sleep. And Moss, a collie pup, is learning the oldest job a dog has. Here is what they stand for. You will have been told animals like these are wrecking the planet. The methane a grazing cow breathes out is carbon the grass pulled from the air last season and sent straight back, nothing like the ancient carbon we drag from the ground and burn. The wildflowers and the curlew are here because of the grazing animals, not despite them. Strip the livestock off a British hill and you do not get Eden. You get bracken, scrub and silence. So this account exists to defend the British farmer, lectured for a generation by people who have never mended a wall in the rain. The man at the gate at first light and the shepherd on the fell in January are the reason this island still works. Underneath sits the oldest pattern of all. The people telling everyone what to eat were never short of meat themselves. The poor got the bread and the gruel and were told to be grateful. The modern version swapped the top hat for a lab coat, but the message is the same. Eat less of the food that built you. Trust the chart. I do not accept it, and neither do they. Real food is the birthright of ordinary people, not a luxury rationed out by the fashionable. So while the country argues over who runs it, the truth sits in the fields, chewing. A bull, a ewe, a goat and the farmers nobody thanks keep this nation fed and its hills alive. The Ruminati run the country. They always have, and never bothered with a press release. Eat well, train hard, mind the land, and come back tomorrow. Pull up a chair at the gate. Gerald will not mind.

More Russia targeting civilians at a market. They deserve everything that Ukraine can rain down on their money making oil & gas refineries.

Just in! The Crimean Bridge has exploded. A powerful underwater blast reportedly struck its central supports directly. The metal structures were twisted like paper, and two massive sections allegedly collapsed into the Black Sea. Everything around it is said to be on fire. Flames are reportedly rising dozens of meters into the air, and the sea is glowing from the blaze. Russian media are allegedly trying to describe it as “just a fire,” but, according to these claims, satellite images show that the Crimean Bridge is no longer standing. It was Russia’s main logistical artery. Without it, the logistics of Russian forces in Crimea would suffer a severe blow. The rapid transport of equipment, ammunition, and reinforcements would be disrupted. According to these claims, the operation was carried out by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU). It was reportedly prepared over a long period and executed with precise planning. What millions of Ukrainians had been waiting for, the claim says, has finally happened. Note: This text contains unverified claims. Independent confirmation would be needed to establish what actually occurred.

Dalton raced to greet his mum Priscilla. She ran for joy, straight out of the trailer, to see every friend in her herd. Her daughter Shasta, whom she nursed when she was orphaned, and raised as her own, is without doubt the happiest to see her mom and does not leave her side.

He’s HERE!

50 each

There is a new field in this universe, and standing in it, at last at ease, is an old soldier. His name is Hector. He is a Cavalry Black, a big Irish-bred gelding the better part of seventeen hands, and for seventeen years he served with the Household Cavalry in London, on State and Ceremonial duty, which is a polite phrase for the hardest thing you can ask of a horse. Understand what that means. A horse is a flight animal. Every instinct in it, refined across millions of years of being prey, says one word in the face of sudden noise and pressing crowds: run. Hector was trained, over years, to do the opposite. To stand. To carry a rider in a steel breastplate down the Mall through a wall of sound, past the bands and the cheering and the saluting guns of the King's Troop, and not move a muscle. To hold himself still on a state occasion while every nerve in his body screamed at him to bolt, and to do it again, and again, faultlessly, because the man on his back and the crowd at his shoulder were trusting half a tonne of flight animal to master its own nature on command. He walked behind a gun carriage at a state funeral once, at the slow march, the drum beating the step, a nation watching through its tears, and he never put a hoof wrong. He is retired now. The shoes are off. The clipped parade coat has been let go woolly and unmilitary, the first sign the people who tend old service horses look for that one is finally letting down. He shares a green field with a small unbothered donkey called Nelson, because a horse should never be alone, and the black charger who stood behind kings and the donkey who has never had a worry in his life are now inseparable. When his old groom visits, Hector lifts his head and nickers across the field before the man has said a word. And here is the part that undoes everyone who knows what they are seeing. One afternoon they found Hector lying flat out on his side in the grass, dead still, and a heart stopped, the way every horseman's does at that sight, because a horse down and flat looks like the worst news there is. Then an ear flicked at a fly, and the breath went out of them in relief. He was simply, deeply asleep. A horse only sleeps like that when it feels entirely safe, because flat on the ground is the one place a prey animal cannot flee from, and most never dare it. For seventeen years Hector stood, awake to every danger, holding everyone else's nerve so they could rely on him. Now, in a quiet field, he has decided it is finally safe to lie down and close his eyes. He gave his courage to the rest of us for seventeen years. He has earned the grass. He is taking it lying down, in the sun, with the donkey keeping watch.

Imagine being just a year old, in distress after 18 hours of labor, scared, hurting, & needing emergency surgery to survive. We said yes to helping, saving mom & 4 puppies. Now we need help covering the cost of saying yes. Donations are matched today ♥️ RescueCoop.org/donate

Now accepting donations! Help the Coop save more very needy dogs ♥️

Not going to lie, mom has a lotta tears for Gumbo tho she tries ta hide them. He gets lots of belly rubs. He did a short yard sniffari & forgo’d his dog food & chimkin for a leftover cheeseburger. He gets whatever he wants for as long as we can stay on top of his pain ♥️.

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It’s $5 Friday! This week we saved Gumbo & Roux! We shared Gumbo’s story but Roux needs a little help getting vet care she really needs. Found stray in rural SC, a high kill shelter reached out & asked if we’d help 2 beagles. We said yes! Roux matters ♥️. rescuecoop.org/donate

After rescuing awhile you get a sense on what shelters kill often & on deadline, which pups are likely to be rescued, which ones without a miracle have no hope. When mom happened upon Abbie and her 2 puppies, she knew they had little hope. High kill AL shelter, brindle pittie mix, shelter notes of being scared. We have been so over capacity mom kept scrolling. But she kept going back to mama’s eyes. Pleading. Somehow hopeless yet hopeful. This little family who weren’t going to get chosen because of breed & because they aren’t fluffy. A shelter that will kill. We committed, got transport and saved Abbie, Aimee & Alice. If you’d like to help w/their vet bill, even just a little, we truly thank you! ♥️ rescuecoop.org/donate

$400 Match on $5 Friday with 4 new Rescues, go to their page and get the full story.