Anyway, I forgot to mention, on the 14th December, John moved house!
This was not an easy decision, John was stressing, losing weight (fast!) and I was trying every which way to work out what was going wrong before I realised he just was not happy and I can honestly say seeing him losing the amount of weight he has in the space of time he has while being on a ton of hay a night alongside two feeds was extremely terrifying and very worrying. Of course as anyone else would, I put his health and well-being first no matter whether it meant I would be strapped for cash or my friends would just not get Christmas presents this year, this was a painful sacrifice I was willing to make (and if you know me, you know how much I love Christmas, so that was not easy).
On top of all of these stressful factors, John is not in any way, shape or form easy to load. I knew this before we bought him and so this was always in the back of my mind but he could not carry on losing the condition he was, it was just not fair to him and at one point I actually came to a choice where by I had to find him a new yard, or sell him because he simply was just not happy and it was not fair to keep him where he was whether that was hard for me or not.
In the end, I decided to hire out a 3.5 ton lorry to move him and this was after the hectic job of finding a yard in the first place!
Safe to say, it was not an easy task. People asked me constantly running up to moving day if I was 'excited', I am going to honestly say, no, no I was not, I wanted to hide in a corner and let someone else deal with all of that and come out when John had settled and everything was fine. Unfortunately, horses don't work that way and if you know my pony at all, you will know he will put his heart into everything for me but will not trust anyone else at all whether he knows them well or not.
All in all, it took us an hour and a half to load him and I know it may sound incredibly stuck up, when I say us, I mean mainly me with some assistance from Beff holding a feed bucket.
Moving day was the most terrifying experience of my life, I won't lie. Once John was on, and this was after the massive amount of tantrums we had and tears followed by cuddles, he absolutley freaked out that he could not get off and frankly so did I watching him stress. I burst into tears and had to run off in the opposite direction and I can honestly say my Mum has never hugged me like that before, it was horrible. While I was pulling myself together, Emma was attempting to calm John down, but like I said, he knows he is my pony and so I told myself to grow a pair and go and help my horse who was clearly having a worse time than I was.
As I expected, once I stood on the other side of the partition, in the back of the lorry and started talking to him, he settled and we managed to set off with one very exhausted owner and one very stressed pony.
The little sod traveled perfectly. He chilled out incredibly quickly and just munched on his hay for the most part while I sat in the back thinking "Why did I buy this pony?! Oh yeah! Because we are the exact same, unfortunately." while being eternally grateful to have a pony on a box and going to a place. By the time we had got 5 minutes down the road I was able to check my phone to see I had messages from friends which were sent around half an hour to an hour before asking if he had settled... the answer definitely was a big fat no.
Once we got there, he dragged me off the box but I knew that was going to happen no matter what and he was still better than when he was delivered where he had sedalin as well. So that was a proud moment for me. He was a pain to try and change his rug and take his wraps off but I cannot blame him because he was very confused and very stressed. He then walked down the field fine, a little on edge and a little bouncy but there were lots of new friends to meet so I can understand that. He went out and had a small trot around, met the locals, saw the sights and then just ate and ate and ate. I've never seen a pony so happy about a field of grass before, it was just so relieving to see him in a field again.
Since his first night, he's been fab overall. Things are still a little scary but he's getting there and he has the brain of a 4 year old so I forgive him for most things. He will get there with time but I can proudly say he is now feeling better than ever, has put all his weight back on (but some more still to go until he's where I would like him to be) and was moved to his home using no aids, no calmers or sedatives but a good old feed bucket and a ton of praise.
Here's to the (hopefully less stressful) future!
Will share some pictures soon as may have some super duper exciting however top secret news to share!
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