Dolly Joins Up and Leads! Also, fox kits and mama vixon.

                 Dolly is really coming along!  Here are four youtubes of her joining up, preparing her to eventually accept a wormer and a bit, lunging and leading.



         


    







And here's a short you tube on one of our students--Jenna Lally-- learning to sit the canter without stirrups:

       
                                                                         Videographer-- Marleny Brennan
      
      And now for our newest--and what hope will become a regular  feature--Fox News!  A litter of seven kits emerged from under the vacant guest house located on a friend's farm in Concord which is the next town over from Acton where I live.  The mother is a tireless hunter who, in the first picture below, is bringing a a lovely green frog to her hungry children.  Here are some additional photos of Mama and her kits who--judging by their blue eyes --are just over four weeks old:

                                                                                 Ainslie Sheridan copyright 04/30/2011

 

                                                               Ainslie Sheridan Copyright 2011

                                                          Ainslie Sheridan Copyright 2011


                               



       Though red foxes have been indigenous to North America for over three thousand years, there were no red foxes on the eastern seaboard until the late fifteenth century.  It seems the colonists did not find that the gray fox--native to the area and with its tendency to go to ground quickly-- offered enough sport.  So, pairs of red foxes were brought over from England to Maryland and Virginia.  They were released and proliferated.  There was a time when England itself had no red foxes and so imported them from France.  Again, it was for the thrill of the hunt.   Of course, one justification for fox hunting is that it is a great help to farmers and keeps the fox population under control.  Well, if you must kill foxes there are less barbaric ways than having them ripped apart by hounds.  And, if over-population is a problem, whose fault is that anyway?  The bottom line is foxes were hunted in the colonies and Great Britain  because people enjoyed the hunt, not because the farmed landscape originally had a fox problem.
     I plan to give you updates on this charming family throughout the summer.  Statistically only two kits from every litter live to reach adulthood.  But my fingers are crossed for these little ones, and I am hoping they will prove the exception to the rule.

     See you next week and thanks for viewing this post.

      Ainslie