A look at Eggsy's year ~ 2017

2017 kicked off with Eggsy's 2nd (official) birthday, we don't actually know his real date of birth so he gets to celebrate with the Thoroughbreds on 1st January 

In February we made long term plans for educating Eggsy

March and time to sort out those encysted small redworm an essential part of horse care   

Easter 2017 was in April 

May & we took a look at a day in the life of a rescue pony 

Eggsy had a visitor in June 

July was a difficult month what with Houdini Eggsy & the theft of our vehicle which was thankfully recovered 

August saw the adventures of destructor pony!

Incredibly September passed without a single photograph of Eggsy being taken we made up for it in October though when we managed to get some adorable pics of him literally lying in his breakfast! 

November saw the launch of Eggsy's fundraising blog shop 

and then it was Christmas !

31st December,

Old Year's Night, 

New Year's Eve 

and we present a random selection of Eggsy photographs grabbed from each month without thinking too much about the choice ~ so nice to look back on 2017.

We do something similar each year so if you'd like you can see Eggsy's 

2016 by clicking here

and

2015 by clicking here

About Eggsy:

Eggsy is a rescue pony he was abandoned and left to starve by his owners as a foal. His care is funded by donations.

Would you like to help Eggsy? 

Eggsy has a GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds for his care, we'd be really grateful if you'd go take a look, share it far and wide via your social media and of course if you can spare some money please donate.

Help Raise Abandoned Foal Eggsy ~ GoFundMe

Thank you, Eggsy and I really appreciate it x

Boxing Day ~ The feast day of St Stephen

December 26th the day after Christmas, we in the UK know it as Boxing Day others the feast of St Stephen, patron Saint of horses. In recent years it's become almost synonymous with the post Christmas sales but it wasn't always like that.

It was once the day when alms boxes were emptied and gifts of money, collected throughout the year, distributed amongst the poorer folk of the community. 

St Stephen's day was a day when one helped those less fortunate than oneself, remember the Christmas carol Good King Wenceslas?

Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Stephen,

When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even,

How he and his page gathered fuel & food to give a poor man warmth and a feast?

Ye who now shall bless the poor, shall yourself find blessing.

Wouldn't it be a little bit marvellous to help some horses on this day, St Stephen's Day, the patron saint of horses day? Especially as this year it also happens to fall on a #CharityTuesday.

So we'll be sending our donation from sales in Eggsy Pony Shop over to Bodmin Moorland Pony Rehabilitation to help toward their horrendous vet bills following an outbreak of strangles. You probably have your own favourite horse rescue who would be very grateful for a little financial assistance at this time of year when feed costs soar. 

Let's make it a new Boxing Day tradition to give to the horses!

 About Eggsy:

Eggsy is a rescue pony he was abandoned and left to starve by his owners as a foal. His care is funded by donations.

Would you like to help Eggsy? 

Eggsy has a GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds for his care, we'd be really grateful if you'd go take a look, share it far and wide via your social media and of course if you can spare some money please donate.

Help Raise Abandoned Foal Eggsy ~ GoFundMe

Thank you, Eggsy and I really appreciate it x

Have yourselves a Merry Little Christmas

"This Christmas:

Mend a quarrel.

Seek out a forgotten friend.

Write a love letter.

Share some treasure.

Give a soft answer.

Encourage youth.

Keep a promise.

Find the time.

Forgive an enemy.

Listen.

Apologize if you were wrong.

Think first of someone else.

Be kind and gentle.

Laugh a little. Laugh a little more.

Express your gratitude.

Gladden the heart of a child.

Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth.

Speak your love. Speak it again.

Speak it still once again. "

                                                           Anonymous

Merry Christmas everyone xx

About Eggsy:

Eggsy is a rescue pony he was abandoned and left to starve by his owners as a foal. His care is funded by donations.

Would you like to help Eggsy? 

Eggsy has a GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds for his care, we'd be really grateful if you'd go take a look, share it far and wide via your social media and of course if you can spare some money please donate.

Help Raise Abandoned Foal Eggsy ~ GoFundMe

Thank you, Eggsy and I really appreciate it x

Eggsy's Fundraising Shop

Eggsy has joined our nation of shopkeepers and opened a shop, with a little help from his friends!

This fabulous box of goodies came all the way from Germany, kindly donated by long term Eggsy friend Eleonore of  Marburger Pferdchen. Thank you Eleonore.

They're now for sale in the blog shop along with a few other things and there will be more shortly.

But why a shop?

Well we need to do a bit of extra fundraising to help pay for winter forage.

We've been lucky and managed to source some mini-hestons of hay at £50 a bale, which is a good price for round here, and, if possible, we'd like to get a few in before the price goes up. It's bound to go up as winter sets in and demand gets higher.

We'd also been thinking that as we've received so much kindness from so many of you, thank you Rory, Philomena, Elizabeth, Claire, Norfolk Bea, Bronwyn, Diane, Nancy, Karen, Christine and our anonymous friend for your donations, that we wanted to "pay it forward" and donate 10% of any sale proceeds (exclusive of post & packing which is charged at cost) to help someone else help a rescue equine.

Then this week we had horrible news from Twitter friends in Bodmin that strangles had hit their yard. Not only is strangles a nasty contagious disease that can become potentially fatal it's also an incredibly expensive one. All equines who have been in contact with strangles have to be tested usually by swabbing the guttural pouch every 2 weeks, 3 consecutive negative swabs indicate that the equine is clear of strangles. As you can imagine this is a very expensive procedure which can go on for months and Bodmin Moorland Pony Rehabilitation are going to have the most horrendous vet bills. 

So that's why we've opened a little Eggsy Shop in addition to Eggsy's GoFundMe and we'll be donating to 10% of  shop sales revenue to Bodmin Moorland Pony Rehabilitation  ~ paying the kindness we've received from all of you forward to someone else.

About Eggsy:

Eggsy is a rescue pony he was abandoned and left to starve by his owners as a foal. His care is funded by donations.

Would you like to help Eggsy? 

Eggsy has a GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds for his care, we'd be really grateful if you'd go take a look, share it far and wide via your social media and of course if you can spare some money please donate.

Help Raise Abandoned Foal Eggsy ~ GoFundMe

Thank you, Eggsy and I really appreciate it x

October update

Golly half way through October and no blog posts that's because Nurse Moreland suggested a table top sale which led to :

Eggsy Brooches

and

Eggsy Art

with hopefully more to follow then we can have a sort of online table top sale for Eggsy Pony!

About Eggsy:

Eggsy is a rescue pony he was abandoned and left to starve by his owners as a foal. His care is funded by donations.

Would you like to help Eggsy? 

Eggsy has a GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds for his care, we'd be really grateful if you'd go take a look, share it far and wide via your social media and of course if you can spare some money please donate.

Help Raise Abandoned Foal Eggsy ~ GoFundMe

Thank you, Eggsy and I really appreciate it x

The Adventures of Destructor Pony

If you've been following Eggsy since his abandonment as a foal you may remember the fence wrecking incident last year well it would seem that he's been at it again!

Not fences this time but feed buckets and not just his own

his friend's bucket has also received the "hoofing" treatment consequently biting the dust

along with some of the water containers used to carry water to the field.

If Eggsy was a child he'd have had his pocket money stopped for weeks. 

It's a good job he's so cute! 

About Eggsy:

Eggsy is a rescue pony he was abandoned and left to starve by his owners as a foal. His care is funded by donations.

Would you like to help Eggsy? 

Eggsy has a GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds for his care, we'd be really grateful if you'd go take a look, share it far and wide via your social media and of course if you can spare some money please donate.

Help Raise Abandoned Foal Eggsy ~ GoFundMe

Thank you, Eggsy and I really appreciate it x

The last day of August

Another month has flown by. What's changed during this last month of summer?

The biggest change for us is that after years of feeding haylage we've returned to hay, at least for the time being. 

You may remember my complaining about the mould issues, well the last straw was when all the equines started to loose weight despite having ad lib haylage.

As you can see the hay seems to be doing the trick, as a certain Eggsy pony is looking quite chunky, this is exactly what we want as we head toward the cooler months and winter.

You might also remember that we were experimenting with a fundraising thermometer to keep track of August's donations.

Did we hit our August target?

We did!!!
                                              

Provided by CoolFundraisingIdeas.net

Thank you Philomena Moreland, Christine King, Anita Neufeld and our anonymous friend.

Will we continue to use the thermometer? Undecided, if you have an opinion on it please share! 

About Eggsy:

Eggsy is a rescue pony he was abandoned and left to starve by his owners as a foal. His care is funded by donations.

You can read the story of his abandonment here: About Eggsy Pony

Would you like to help Eggsy? 

Eggsy has a GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds for his care, we'd be really grateful if you'd go take a look, share it far and wide via your social media and of course if you can spare some money please donate.

Help Raise Abandoned Foal Eggsy ~ GoFundMe

Thank you, Eggsy and I really appreciate it x

Eggsy pony's farrier Friday

Time for Eggsy to have his hooves trimmed again, here's the video from last time:




Which reminds me that I haven't told you that Eggsy now has a YouTube channel you can find it here:

Eggsy Pony

Not much there at the moment but I will try and get more little video clips for you.

About Eggsy:

Eggsy is a rescue pony he was abandoned and left to starve by his owners as a foal. His care is funded by donations.

You can read the story of his abandonment here: About Eggsy Pony

Would you like to help Eggsy? 

Eggsy has a GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds for his care, we'd be really grateful if you'd go take a look, share it far and wide via your social media and of course if you can spare some money please donate.

Help Raise Abandoned Foal Eggsy ~ GoFundMe

Our aim this month (August) is to raise £100 to pay for feed. Thank you Philomena for starting us off. 

Provided by CoolFundraisingIdeas.netThank you, Eggsy and I really appreciate it x

New GoFundMe target for rescue pony

"Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits"

First day of August so to bring luck  all month long, "Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits". (It's an old superstition / folklore custom ) 

July saw us attain Eggsy's second year GoFundMe target, thank you everyone, thank you Diane Salek for your July contribution. Hitting target means we come to the (for me) hardest part of raising Eggsy re-setting the target.

"I think the hardest part to get to is that point of asking for help or reaching out to other people and being honest with yourself" Mary-Kate Olsen

I find it really, really hard asking for financial assistance for Eggsy but I cannot do this by myself, my family do not have the money to keep this little chap without help. That makes me feel bad as I really feel that I SHOULD have enough money of my own to do this but I don't..................

So the target has been raised to help cover his living costs, food, farrier, worming, vaccination etc

As some of you know we sometimes struggle to get funds in on a monthly basis in time to pay the feed bill so a friend suggested that I use a fundraising thermometer here on the blog to show how we're doing. They even found a free one for Eggsy which you can find here if you'd like to try it for yourself.

So here it is, set at £100 to pay Eggsy's August feed bill, donations can be made via Eggsy's GoFundMe , and the idea is that as the money is raised the thermometer will rise showing how close we are to our month's target. It's a bit of an experiment, so what do you think, is this a good idea or not?

Provided by CoolFundraisingIdeas.net

About Eggsy:

Eggsy is a rescue pony he was abandoned and left to starve by his owners as a foal. His care is funded by donations.

You can read the story of his abandonment here: About Eggsy Pony

Would you like to help Eggsy? 

Eggsy has a GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds for his care, we'd be really grateful if you'd go take a look, share it far and wide via your social media and of course if you can spare some money please donate.

Help Raise Abandoned Foal Eggsy ~ GoFundMe

Thank you, Eggsy and I really appreciate it x

Eggsy's July so far

What a month it's been so far :

First up following my Moaning Mrytle blog post at the end of June the usual kind hearts stepped forward and topped up Eggsy's fundraiser for June. Thank you Leighton Cooksey,  Philomena Moreland and Christine King.

This left us £30 off our second year target when, and this is beyond exciting, Norfolk Bea made a donation of £35 starting us off on our 3rd year target to raise everyone's pony Eggsy. Quickly followed by donations from Elizabeth Love and our regular anonymous friend.

Eggsy's Happy Dance !

Huge thanks to you all, we're ever so grateful, couldn't do this this without your help. Thank you everyone.

But have you noticed anything? It's always the same few people who time and time again put their hands in their pockets and help us out and yet Eggsy's following has grown to over three and a half thousand. Don't get me wrong I'm not complaining here just curious as to how all this fundraising stuff works really.

Not a very flattering picture of the little escape artist as he is re-incarcerated! 

In other news the great escapes have continued. If any of you were around for Tuesday's Twitter chat hour, #ponyhour, you'll know that we received a phone call to tell us that Eggsy was out during the night. So we had to make an emergency trip to capture him in the dark and pop him back in his paddock. Fortunately Eggsy has become quite easy to catch over the past few weeks so at least we didn't have to run around for ages in the dark!

Escape artist Eggsy & his favourite feed waggon!

Something else you'll already know, if you follow Eggsy's Twitter account, is that our Land Rover was stolen sometime after 6.30am on Wednesday morning. It's an old rust tub really but it's hugely valuable to me as it's what I use to negotiate our mud track to take 60 kilos of haylage a day down to Eggsy & friends, plus gallons and gallons of water and their hard feeds. I can't manage without it!

The gods were definitely smiling on us though, because that evening we received a telephone call telling us where it was. A friend had put the theft on a local FB page which someone had spotted after noticing that a Land Rover was parked in their residential close. So off we went to pick it up, fortunately it was undamaged.

Eggsy & Land Rover feed waggon reunited!

Of course there was some concern that whoever had nicked it would just come back and re-nick it so to speak so we were grateful to friends who allowed us to park it over night in their secure compound. It's now had one of those metal boxes fitted over the pedals as a theft deterrent.

So all in all July is proving to be a bit of a roller coaster month so far, let's hope there are more ups than downs for the rest of the month!

About Eggsy:

Eggsy is a rescue pony he was abandoned and left to starve by his owners as a foal. His care is funded by donations.

You can read the story of his abandonment here: About Eggsy Pony

Would you like to help Eggsy? 

Eggsy has a GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds for his care, we'd be really grateful if you'd go take a look, share it far and wide via your social media and of course if you can spare some money please donate.

Help Raise Abandoned Foal Eggsy ~ GoFundMe

Thank you, Eggsy and I really appreciate it x

Eggsy's June

June 30th ~ the year is going so fast!

So what's been going on this month? Well too be honest it's been a difficult month. It started so nicely with a lovely visit from NurseMoreland and Eggsy even managed to behave nicely for the farrier, thank you Bronwyn for sponsoring his farrier work. 

But things went rather down hill from there:

Being British it's okay to moan about the weather right?

The heatwave kind of put the mockers on working with Eggsy which makes me feel bad, he needs to learn how to be well mannered, but golly it was too HOT for me and the horses.

Of course this being England sunshine is always followed by rain which brings about it's own set of problems, mainly MUD which makes negotiating the track down to the horses with their forage and water somewhat perilous! 

Forage ~ now that has been a sore point this month. Just about every bale of haylage opened has had some mould issues resulting in a lot of fodder being unusable. Plus to add insult to injury I swear the bales have been smaller.

I weigh my forage before feeding to make sure that Eggsy & Co get the right amount of food, don't want anyone going hungry here, so I do know when the 300 kilo bale is actually only a 240 kilo bale! Unfortunately I have no recourse to complaint as the forage supplier clearly states in their terms that bale sized may vary dependant on time of year. 

And while I'm being a Moaning Mrytle I might as well tell you all that the haylage has been horrid, a late cut with an almost straw like texture NOT what you expect for £50 a bale! Sadly it's difficult at this time of year as the new stuff isn't ready yet so it's often a case of put up and shut up or you upset your supplier which could lead to a whole new batch of problems.

To top that off feed prices have all gone up at the feed merchants and donations have been down, it costs £100 a month to feed Eggsy that's without his other expenses, and we're £40 short for June.

As if that's not enough to raise stress levels a certain Mr Eggsy Pony has started his escape plans again, seriously Eggsy's theme tune should be:



Don't really know what we're going to do about this, the electric fence energizer was replaced in December  maybe new batteries are called for we've had ours a while now but at this moment in time I truly hope not! 

Right that's enough of my moans, tomorrow sees the start of a new month and things ARE going to get better. They have to! 

About Eggsy:

Eggsy is a rescue pony he was abandoned and left to starve by his owners as a foal. His care is funded by donations.

Would you like to help Eggsy? 

Eggsy has a GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds for his care, we'd be really grateful if you'd go take a look, share it far and wide via your social media and of course if you can spare some money please donate.

Help Raise Abandoned Foal Eggsy ~ GoFundMe

Thank you, Eggsy and I really appreciate it x

Eggsy has a visitor

Last week's National Best Friend Day coincided with a UK general election and amongst all the excitement this blog post didn't get published so we'll make up for it now:

Eggsy has lots of friends online, we follow one another on Twitter (you'll find Eggsy @eggsypony if you're on Twitter and would like to follow him). We retweet one another, which really helps the story of Eggsy's abandonment get out to the world, and we sometimes get to chat to one another. 

But, we don't usually get the opportunity to meet in person. All that changed the other week when one of Eggsy's  long term friends and supporters @NurseMoreland  was able to pop in and see him.

If there's one thing Eggsy's equine friend Boo has taught him it's not to be backward in coming forward when a human visits. 

Why? Because they may come bearing treats!

Lots of yummy treats ~ apples, carrots and extra strong mints, thank you Philomena.

@NurseMorland proved to be such a popular visitor that when she popped back to see Eggsy on her return journey, 

although caught napping,

 he quickly responded with a "Hello" 

(and "a what have you got for me?")

Thank you Philomena for a lovely visit and 
your continued support for Eggsy.

About Eggsy:

Eggsy is a rescue pony he was abandoned and left to starve by his owners as a foal. His care is funded by donations.

Would you like to help Eggsy? 

Eggsy has a GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds for his care, we'd be really grateful if you'd go take a look, share it far and wide via your social media and of course if you can spare some money please donate.

Help Raise Abandoned Foal Eggsy ~ GoFundMe

Thank you, Eggsy and I really appreciate it x