Members Stories

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'Finding Moony'

By CLARE MACLENNAN

“Grey Highland Mare, ex-stalking pony, suitable for family/small adult, 13.3hh, 20ish, registered but no papers, hence £550 including tack and rug.”

Somehow as I read those words and lifted the phone I had a gut feeling my life was never going to be the same again. The time wasn’t really right yet. I had asked the farmer if I could rent a bit of land backing onto the house and he had given his approval but nothing was in place. The girl on the other end of the line was very friendly…
“But I don’t have a box or any transport”, I garbled
“Don’t worry. We will bring her over.”
“The field isn’t fenced yet.”
“My boyfriend and I run a fencing business. We will come over and do it for you.”
“But we are going abroad in a couple of weeks”
“You can keep her at the livery yard where I work at a reduced rate until you come back.”
It was meant to be!! Naturally I fell in love with her on my first visit. She had that grumpy Highland mareish attitude of “I really can’t be bothered with all this fuss” but I wasn’t put off or taken in by this act of aloofness in the slightest. Cash quickly changed hands to make sure nobody else slipped in and bought her, no vetting was carried out– just the amateur eyes of myself and a friend cast over her, a short trial ride and Moony was mine!!
All the information I came away with that day was that she was possibly Glenshiel Daisy and her previous owner had been a lady called Heather who had left the area. I was so overwhelmed with the responsibility of becoming the owner and sole carer of my own pony, information about her past hardly seemed important anyway! Shortly after she arrived home the couple came over to work on the fences. They informed me they had phoned the Campbells of Glenshiel to try and find out about her. Mr Campbell had simply said that if she was Daisy then she was 35. We all gazed at this sparky lady of mature years and agreed that it simply wasn’t possible.
I would not say it was a bed of roses from the start. Moony knew, as any wise old mare would know, just which buttons to press to test my confidence and abilities. There was a power struggle as to which one of us was the Alpha mare and for a short while I think she won!! She tried to scrape me off on trees in the forest, backed towards steep embankments and bucked if she was asked to hack out when she did not feel like it. However in time we learned to trust each other and whilst I tried to accommodate her insecurities and quickly acquired Barney the Shetland pony to keep her company, so she started to believe in and look after me too. We had five years of gentle hacking together but I knew that soon it would be unfair to ask her to continue working and when she fell in the forest one day I knew the time had come to retire her once and for all.
As time had passed and my love for her had deepened my herd had also increased in size from two to three with the arrival of Jester the Welsh Cob. Moony simply refused to be alone EVER and when Barney died prematurely of Cushings and I was back down to two ponies she would escape from the field and come trotting down the road after us if I dared to try and take Jester out without her. Unfortunately she would also threaten to beat up any other pony that had joined us for a pleasant hack, so once again, despite my frequent declarations that “Two ponies are quite enough. I’m not going to get another!” Moony got her way! Ishie, another grey Highland mare joined the herd bringing numbers back up to three so that Moony would never have to be alone.
In spite of her retirement and the measures that I had put in place to ensure her psychological well-being Moony still insisted that the herd should go out en masse whenever possible. Initially I tried to ride and lead or enlist a friend or two to assist but often there was nobody about to help so I decided to try taking her in the forest with us loose – Success!! She was well behaved and everybody was happy. I had enrolled Jester in the HPEC’s Happy Hacker scheme and I felt that Moony’s hard work, trundling along behind (or on the way home, in front, of the ridden ponies) should also be rewarded. A wee request to the committee to recognise her efforts and the Happy Hiker award was created! Her rosette has pride of place in the kitchen.
I knew the history of my other two ponies and started to really want to know more about Moony. As her previous owners could not give me any lines of enquiry to follow I joined the HPEC message board. My first post, probably five years ago, drew a complete blank. I wrote letters to the Campbells sending photographs but they could not remember anything about her. They explained that there had been a fire many years ago and sadly many of their records and documents had been lost at this time.
Occasionally I would think I had a clue. One day I saw the name “Chapman” scratched into a metal mane comb which and come with her grooming kit. Could this be the surname of the elusive Heather? Sadly it turned out to be a red herring and my hopes were dashed. At the time I bought Jester his owner had been the saddler in the area for some time and he tantalisingly remembered working on a stalking saddle for a Moonshine but couldn’t think who the client had been. He even recognised the patch work on her old suede saddle as work he had done for someone – but who?
I decided to enlist the help of Moony herself. Maybe she could tell me if only I could find someone able to communicate with her. I searched the Internet and discovered Isobel Hogton’s website. For those who haven’t heard of Isobel she is a Horse Listener and healer. Isobel’s visit was amazing. I do have a degree of scepticism about these things and I hadn’t considered that even if Moony did “tell” Isobel who she was and what she had done in the past I would have no way of gauging if it was accurate or not. However one thing that Moo told her was that she likes it when I sing to her which I found amusing!! I do sing to her when she asks me to scratch her favourite spots. Whether it is a sound to enjoy is very much a matter of opinion! Moony certainly seemed to like Isobel very much – she followed her to the gate and gazed after her as the car disappeared down the driveway.
As I read other people’s threads on the message board discussing their ponies’ lineage my desire to know more got stronger. One day when I was browsing through the Highlands for Sale on Claire’s Native Pony site I came across a Glenshiel pony being sold by the estate. Once again I contacted them. Nothing!! Then, out of the blue an e mail arrived from Mandy Lenz at Glenshiel. She said she thought Daisy would be 12. This confused me further as I knew that simply was not possible. Maybe Moony was not Daisy after all then? Once more I turned to the Board for support and encouragement. However after further correspondence with Mandy I established that Glenshiel used an alphabetical system to name their foals – Daisy was not 12 – she was from the last time D was used – she was much older. What Mr Campbell said now made sense. So if I could find out if Moony really was Daisy then I would know her age. If she wasn’t – my search seemed to be at a standstill. But where could I go from here? I had asked farriers, saddlers, breeders but nobody knew the elusive Heather.
One day this winter several of us Board members decided to meet up for lunch and a chat about ponies. Kerry was amongst us – quiet, pleasant and unassuming with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the breed lines of Highland ponies and Stud books! She seemed interested and said she would see what she could find out. We parted company at Tesco’s car park and I almost forgot her promise as I had more or less accepted it as a lost cause.
Several months later and an unexpected e mail from Kerry popped into my inbox. She remembered a ghillie from up the west called “Heather” and had read an article about Heather Mitchell the “Frilly Ghillie” and her demonstrations at Game Fairs. Could it be the same person? As the day passed the emails came thick and fast as Kerry kept me informed as to how her detective work was progressing. Heather, she discovered, had lived in the same area as the girl I bought Moony from had some years ago. Things were looking promising. I was beside myself with anticipation!! A phone call to the Scobies (Coulmore) confirmed it at last. They knew Heather Mitchell well and she had indeed owned a grey Highland mare called Moonshine. They gave her phone numbers to Kerry. It was now well into the evening.
Could I phone at 11pm – no I’d better wait until a more reasonable hour. Maybe my phone call would not be welcomed? Maybe she would not know what I was talking about. My head buzzed all night as I slept a fitful sleep. I was awake at the crack of dawn – too early to phone…distract yourself Clare…do something until 10 o clock. The phone rang and rang, then the familiar voice of BT1571 answerphone cut in. I prattled away to the machine then hung up. Nothing – no one returned my call. Perhaps Heather was away for the Easter weekend. I had a mobile number so rather than wait I tried it. I could sense the confusion on the other end of the line as I ran through my garbled albeit well-rehearsed spiel yet again. There was a pause then I heard Heather yell to whoever was with her:
“My God – she’s got Moonshine!!!”
The ice was broken and we swapped stories at a ridiculous speed.
I was able to confirm that “Moonshine”, as Heather had named her, is indeed Daisy of Glenshiel. This makes her approximately 41 years young, bless her!! I am very much looking forward to meeting Heather this summer and showing off my dear girl to her.
My final words must be those of extreme gratitude to Kerry MacLennan. Without you Kerry none of this would have happened. I would still be wondering who Moony was, how old she was, Heather would also be thinking about her old pony Moonshine and what had become of her as she had been the very day I phoned her. If anybody out there needs a “Hipo Detective” I know just the person to put on your case…..

Post Script
A year after I traced Heather she sent me the newspaper cutting of the advert from when she bought Moony (who was then Daisy). I phoned the number, never expecting the same people to be there, but they were! They were able to tell me that Daisy had been a stalking pony belonging to Lord Strathnaver. She lived alone in a field up a forest track, beside a loch and used to run up and down the fence when they rode past on their horses. One day Daisy escaped from this field, trundled along the woodland track alone until she came across their croft. She made her way into their garden where she could see the other horses and there she stayed!! They could not bear to return her to her life of solitude and telephoned Lord Strathnaver who agreed to sell her to them as argocats were taking the place of the stalking ponies.