Alfie

Born 1985, Bay Andalucian approx 15hh.

Our old girl. Mother of Spirit and Fern. Has had a very hard past life. We do not know her history but she has lots of scars and appears to have been used as a work horse. She has never really made any friends within the herd which is sad, and keeps herself to herself. Now that she has Spirit and Fern she at least has some company, and she is a good mum.

Like Morena, she has had lots of problems with laminitis in the past. When we took her on she was incredibly fat and could barely walk. Our intention was to do what we could for her and use her as a companion horse. We never thought that she would ever be healthy enough to ride but she proved us wrong. We slimmed her down and she seemed so well that we decided to try to ride her. To our surprise she was fantastic and was a great lead horse as she had a lovely fast walk and was happy to do anything we wanted. Her weight, however, seemed to be still going down, so we very carefully started to try to fatten her up a bit using special laminitis friendly foods. After a while she started to look quite fat and we started to wonder if she could be pregnant! Because we had been fattening her up it was difficult to know and we spent a few months thinking 'is she, isn't she'. We eventually called our vet out, who confirmed that she was pregnant but that she still had a few months to go and because of Alfies age it would be a good idea to keep riding her gently to keep her fit. That same evening we hacked her out. She was slower than normal and we put it down to the pregnancy. The following morning, while we had popped out for half an hour, she gave birth to Spirit, in the field with all the other horses! We arrived home to find her still expelling the after birth. Luckily little Spirit was fine, but what a surprise! July 05 brought another 'muck heap' birth,in amongst all the other horses!. Again she surprised us by giving birth to little Fern a month early. Luckily we were able to witness the birth (quite worrying, knowing the foal was early!) Thankfully everything was fine.

We are hoping to start riding her again soon, as she is happy to get away from the herd sometimes, but due to her age and the fact that she is quite thin, we may have to retire her.