Hope Bluebell ( Born 17th June 2008)

17th June 2008. Hope Bluebell was born, our first foal to be born at Hope Pastures and the last foal to be born on the site for 27 years. We are very proud to have her at the sanctuary.

Hope Bluebell is coming along really well, she is very entertaining and also independent, she seems only to need her mum for milk and entertains herself for the rest of the time! She loves people and will gallop over when she is called. She is very well mannered and will lift her hooves up when asked, only for a few seconds at a time but we are building up on this ready to have her prepared for her first farrier visit. She is also halter broken although she will dig her heels in a lot of the time and refuse to walk forward so has to be gently pushed along by her bottom!
 She loves to play and isn’t afraid of anything-we put Tarpaulins in her paddock to teach her not to be nervous and she ran over, climbed into it and began pawing it and rolling on it again and again! She also loves to play football.

October 09
Hope Bluebell has moved to her new home where she has gone to keep another 2 shetlands company. As we didn't want to take her away  from her mum too abruptly we asked her new carers to temporarily take Humbug for a week or so and they kindly agreed, which worked well with the least trauma possible caused to mum and daughter.
A week later Humbug came back to Hope Pastures and thankfully both her and Hope seemed not to miss one another or become distressed.
Hope Bluebell has a new pony friend called Strimmer who is 6 years old and had been living only with bigger horses so a small friend was wanted who could play more on her level, however in between Hope Bluebell arriving another shetland foal named Teddy was rescued who is 6 months old, so she has two small friends at her new home who she gets along really well with. She and Teddy and Strimmer even share buckets of feed and they are lucky ponies who have 16 acres of land to roam which includes hills, woodland and a valley to explore plus their own shetland house and stables.
When She is old enough Hope Bluebell will be trained to be a ridden childrens pony but in the meantime will be getting lots of training , handling and taken for walks to see more of the outside world.
We miss her cheeky antics but we are pleased that in the long term she will have a happy and useful life and she is not too far away for us to pop in to say hello to her.

Summer 09

Jan 09

First winter

July 08

June 08

A few hours old