Prepared For Snow and The Plight of the Papermill Ponies

They promised snow.  A whole weekend of snow! It never happened. But at least we were prepared. The bigger ponies were given rugs with fillings. We stuffed all the water pipes with straw and covered them.  We moved the little ponies into a rambling area around the tack room and between the barns so they had loads of shelter, and dragged their hay bin round. It did try and snow. Some of it even layed for about 5 minutes. 

Meanwhile over xmas I joined a facebook group called Save The Papermill Ponies. The group is trying to highlight the plight of the gypsy ponies that are tethered in and around Bramford village near Ipswich, and are attached to the West Meadows Traveller Site. Now I grew up nearby, and all my childhood played with the gypsy children and rode their ponies.  In those days they were well cared for despite being tethered. By the way my biggest gripe about tethering is that it takes away the horses freedom to flee.....as stabling also does. 
Anyway, I thought I would go and check it out for myself. There are about 50 or so ponies on the Water Meadows near the River, but I never got to those.  I started with a field of just 6. They had water, but were just stood on droppings. Two fillies were actually tethered together. One mare had lost an eye. I was slightly shocked when I saw that, as usually the eyelid is stitched over. This was just a gaping socket. One of the double tied fillies had really long feet.  There was one moulding round bale of hay in the field......which none of them could reach.  Having then rashly broadcast a live video stream to Facebook, I dished out some carrots an gave them an armful of hay each.  
I then became very rash, and made my way up the hill towards the Traveller Site. There is a very large enclosure there with maybe 40 ponies in. I wanted to get close enough to get some long lens pictures. Seeing a man in the enclosure I jumped down into a ditch to hide. Imagine my horror apon looking down, to see a hoof sticking out of a pony shaped mound of sand.  Scrabbling about I uncovered a hairy foot. Thankfully I had enough wits about me to take a couple of pictures, before legging it. By this time it was getting dark and I had no desire to come face to face with an irate traveler. I didn't want to lose my camera for a start.
I think I was in shock for about 10 minutes, then I had to stop the car to throw up (Sorry too much info). That knocked my dry January on the head. 

I'm pleased to say I have had about 3000 hits on the video and loads of shares. The dead pony in the ditch has been reported to the authorities. And best of all finally the constant nagging of the Group saw 10 ponies removed on Thursday.
Hopefully now the owners have seen that they WILL lose the ponies and therefore money, they may step up their care of the others a little.  And the girls of the Save The Papermill Ponies group will continue to check on them, as will I.

Polly Ready for The Snow

Yes this was IT

Below is the link to the video i took.  The first few seconds may give you neck ache but it does right itself quickly.
Many thanks for looking and sharing.

https://youtu.be/9GazCOto_b0