On Monday my wifi at home went down so I rang my internet company and after being given what seemed like a tour of India by phone and visits by a plethora of engineers nobody seems to know what is wrong hence my apparent disappearance. Today I finally resorted to setting up my mobile broadband to access the internet but this is incredibly slow because where I live is terrible for phone signal. Therefore I am currently sat with my laptop outside on a makeshift table because this is the only place I can get any

I know I've not been very active recently but hopefully now, or at least after next week I will be more active _{I know I keep saying this but I really mean it this time... hopefully.}

Among all this there has been the matter of Ruby; thank you for all you kind messages of hope for her but unfortunately last week she had to be put to sleep. The vets did everything they could but as we thought the post-mortem concluded that she did have grass sickness. For those of you who don't know; grass sickness is a rare but incurable disease that paralyses the digestive system, it mainly effects young horses, most die suddenly within 24 hours but rarely horses (like Ruby) may go down over several weeks and some of these cases may have a chance of survival. The cause is still unknown, there is no way of prevention and it is practically impossible to diagnose until after death. There is only a 5% survival rate and despite our best efforts Ruby didn't pull through. The equine hospital she was at is involved in a nation wide research scheme, this meant she was part of the research and the vets visited where we kept her and took samples from the other horses she was in the field with, all of whom were unaffected by grass sickness, so although I lost my pony I hope that the vets may have learnt something from her death and someday a cure or way of prevention will be found for this horrible disease.