Stockshill Strawberry Shortcake AKA Lovely Lola

06/12/2024

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22/03/2023

https://consult.forestryengland.uk/corporate-and-forestry-support/forestry-england-horse-riding-permits-survey/consultation/intro/

Horse riding Humans, please complete this survey like my mum did?! Why should my mum have to have a permit to ride me in the forests when silly men on bicycles wearing silly clothes don't have to have one?🧐

This site contains consultations that are run by Forestry Commission England.

06/07/2022

Has anyone seen my Mum??!! I'm really worried cos I haven't seen her since last week and normally she'd have been bothering me with brushes, hoof picks, etc, putting that huge saddle on me, heaving herself on board and taking me out for a nice ride or two. However SOMEONE ELSE has turned up recently, giving me my hay, picking up my poo and yesterday she told me my Mum was having a lovely time on her riding holiday in Spain. WHAT. THE. FLYING. FERRETS???!!!!! HOW DARE SHE???!!! I tell you what, when she gets back and wears those fancy new jodhpurs of hers smelling of some other horse, I shall make sure to bite her very hard just where it hurts. I am very, very cross so she'd better watch out!

19/06/2022

My human mum took us out for a hack today. It was perfect weather, not raining, a light breeze and not too hot. There were hardly any humans about which always pleases my mum cos she's a bit of a miss ant rope (or at least that's what it sounded like when she said it). However two naughty men rode up behind me very fast on bicycles without telling me or mum that they were passing so I shot sideways and turned my bum out quickly so the second man had to squeak to a halt and nearly fell off. Oh how I laughed! My mum didn't though. She told them they were lucky they didn't get kicked and then lectured them both for five minutes on how they should pass a horse correctly in the future. I think their ears were hurting by the end - she does go on sometimes! Anyway, after this excitement we continued on our way and then I saw a very strange sight! It was an animal rustling about in the grass, quite big, bigger than the hares which often run through my field but it had very short legs and it was a funny silvery grey colour with a black and white striped face!! Mum got very excited and made me stand still while we watched this thing sniffing about in the grass. Then it disappeared behind a bush and I was allowed to move on. Mum said it was a badger but what it was doing out and about in the middle of the day she doesn't know.

26/03/2022

And he's still a pest three years on!

My new baby bro, Baker, sitting on my bum. I didn't care ; I'd got hay 😊

07/03/2022

Well!! I don't know what my human parents are thinking, but they've had me in that rubbery, sandy oblong place twice this week! Both of them! They said something about needing to get fit for some holiday or other - in a place called Spain? I asked my mate Bella who comes from there (or at least her dad did) and she said she thinks it's a place far, far away and it's very hot sometimes. Well, what I want to know is, are they taking me??! And if not, why not? I LOVE exploring!! Yours anxiously, Lovely Lola

19/02/2022

Hello again humans!!! Two posts on one day - I'm spoiling you! I thought you might like to hear about me being brave, helpful and generally lovely - as per usual of course! Today in between all the wind and rain my two humans took me for a lovely hack in the countryside. It was very exciting spotting all the fallen trees and working our way round them to get past, and my mum said that our canters were excellent and I was very well behaved. Well, my dad had come too with my canine brothers and they were pottering along behind us so sometimes we had to wait for them but I didn't mind. And then we stopped to say hello to some of my fans who wanted the usual stroking and photo opportunity. We were just about to set off along the track for home when my dad spotted that my canine brother Caspar had blood pouring from his paw and he was limping. So I very kindly offered him a lift and carried him all the way home. I'm a star! My mum and dad said so! Trot on everyone! Toodle pip!

19/02/2022

Hello everybody! Hope you're enjoying this wind?! I love it!! I get so excited that I gallop up and down my paddock cutting great chunks out of my grass so that my mum gets all worried about having to reseed and roll it later on. And the fences keep blowing down so I have great fun watching poor Mr Farmer driving round in his big machine putting new fence posts in everywhere. He had to put in 6 new ones in my paddock today. He did look very tired and he'd still got loads more to do after mine. Oh how I laughed! Silly humans! If they just left all the fences down we'd all just have fun galloping about, stealing each others' hay and generally having an excellent time. So I have no sympathy at all for them. Anyhow, keep your hair on, humans, and don't worry about this wind and rain. Very soon we'll be having a draught and then you'll all be moaning about the fact that the grass isn't coming through! 😁. And see my next post for another story about me being heroic!

13/12/2021

I'm not sure that I'm speaking to my mum at the moment. She's turned me into a dustcart! I was very cross about this attack on my dignity but she says this is a noble calling, and will help offset my carbon footprint. Do you know what your carbon footprint is? I don't know what mine is either although I do know it changed when that farrier chap put shoes on me for the first time a couple of months ago. My footprints show up in the mud much more now. Anyhow, we got lots of brownie points from passing walkers yesterday, and my Dad put all the rubbish in Mr Farmer's bin so it's his problem now 😁😁😁. Trot on everyone!

14/11/2021

Does anyone remember that song from the film "Bambi"? Drip Drip Drop Little April Showers, etc, etc? Well I heard a new version today. We were out for a hack, my Mum and me, just wandering along the middle track, when all of a sudden Mum started bellowing. She called it singing, but I can assure you that it sounded much more like bellowing. And the words went something like this : "Bang bang bang Little stupid Partridge, don't come out here to scare us today. Bang bang bang you stupid partridge don't make my pony run away.". It sounded simply dreadful and Mum seemed quite embarrassed when some people passing by on the Roman Road covered their ears with their hands and walked away very quickly. But it did have the desired effect I'm afraid, and all the partridges which normally shoot out of the corn right under my feet making me zoom sideways and have great fun scaring my Mum, had flown off long before we reached them today. This is good news for my Mum but very bad news for any other humans or indeed ponies nearby. Does anyone know where I can get some of those ear protectors that fancy showjumpers wear to stop getting distracted? If my mum is going to be doing this kind of thing regularly, then I need some protection too! Trot on!

17/10/2021

My mum is very anti drugs. She was always a Just Say No and Ask Frank type of human. So she never gives me anything to make me behave in a mad fashion, but today she said she thinks that Mad Witch woman from Britannia who's just had one of her arms eaten has made a potion and given it to me. Otherwise, she said, she can't work out why I was such a bloomin' nightmare on our hack today. Personally I think she was making a lot of fuss about nothing! It was perfectly reasonable of me, while trotting nicely along the middle track, suddenly to break into a canter, swerve suddenly onto the newly harrowed field, get panicked when the soil was so soft under my feet, put in a couple of big bucks, accelerate into a gallop and then try to bolt across a freshly planted field!
Unfortunately for me, my Mum's nice new Western saddle makes it much easier for her to stick on when I perform these graceful moves, and on this occasion she didn't end up landing heavily and then having to walk home via a nice little visit to Addenbrooke's. Instead, she managed to sit down, tell me to stop being a k**b, and pulled me up just as I was whizzing round the corner planning to burst through the hedge onto the unsuspecting humans wandering along the Roman Road. This would have been great fun for me but I wasn't allowed. Either I'm losing my touch or my mum and her saddle are improving her ability to stick on. Still, I managed to annoy her for the rest of our ride by jumping sideways every time I heard a pigeon flapping its wings, and then pretending to be a snorting war horse all the way up the nice track where I'm often allowed to canter but today my mum told me to walk, trot and halt in turn so I had to listen to her for once. I'm such a lovely girl, it could only have been a magic potion which made me so naughty, couldn't it?

02/10/2021

Well! What can I say?? For 10 years I've been pottering round on my own hooves but this summer they've all fallen to bits. There's this man who comes to see me regularly and he always looks at my feet, all four of them. Quite often he nips bits off them and then he has this lovely long scrapey thing which he rubs up and down and makes them all smooth. My mum calls him her farrier and she always gets all giggly and silly when he visits. Apparently lots of horsey mums do this. We horses just laugh at them because it's so silly. Most of our mums are old and ugly and most of our farriers are young and handsome. Does my mum stand a chance with our farrier? I don't think so!! Anyway, I digress. This time when our farrier came to see me, he tutted and prodded my toes and said he thought I would need some shoes because of the weather. I like getting wet and muddy but this year my feet keep getting wet, but then the ground dries out before my hooves do and my toes get all bruised and bits fall off. It's very annoying. So anyway, he went off to his truck and rattled about in the back and then he tried this hard round thing against my front foot and he seemed happy with it. But then he took it away and when he came back with it it was very very hot and it made my hoof hiss when he pressed it against it. The smell was terrible and all this smoke billowed about but I didn't flinch; I thought it was interesting. And then the farrier man started bashing away at my foot with a hammer and when I put my foot down I was standing on this funny plate thingy. This apparently is a shoe! Then he put another one on my other front foot. He said I was very good and he said to my mum, "this pony's been shod before". But she said "No she hasn't; we've had her since she was a yearling and she's never been shod before". That shows how good I was!! So now I'm walking round with these metal plate shoe thingies on and it seems fine. It'll be good if my feet stop falling apart anyway!