Thank you all.

Thank you everyone for the lovely comments. I sometimes find that I have to give in, have a good cry and just wallow a bit. A long sleep always helps and I often wake the next day as a new person feeling like I've lost a whole day with almost no recall of it! It's unsettling, but I just have to go with it. There's no pulling myself up by my bootstraps and I'm sure most people who suffer with this problem know that well. You just can't shrug off the burden of depression no matter how hard you try.

When I was first single after 20 years of marriage, I tried to soldier on. I had to prove something to myself. I wanted to be a Superwoman! It's just not possible, I put off the emotions for too long and in the end it's what caused me to develope Fibromyalgia. Sometimes I hate having this condition and sometimes I view it as my body having more sense than my mind. It tells me to stop, take stock and assess how far I'm pushing myself. I also have to be more clever about how I live and work out ways to get the same job done but without making myself ill.

This is why my workload is so varied, I want to do the garden and work with the ponies, but it has to be limited and then I can sit and do painting, spinning or making pendants. I guess this is a holistic approach and it certainly works for me.

A prime example of taking a different view of a problem is what's helping me to deal with Flash, our naughtiest pony.  He's the worst sort of escape artist. I caught him last week with his whole front end through the fences and onto the road! He just doesn't seem to feel the electric from the fence the way the others do! We had to tighten up the wire and reinforce the electric just to find that he'd then ducked under the fence and onto the newly seeded reserve paddock. I've literally been pulling my hair out. He's also very unbalanced and unaware of his feet, he's trampled me more times than all of the others put together!

Yesterday I decided to do a little 'in-hand' work to teach Flash about spacial boundaries and where exactly to put his feet when asked. He was so confused at first but I discovered that he loves praise and above all, scratches on his neck. He's a very nervous little soul and was given to T as a companion for Jerry when he was about 2years. Jerry and the others all treated him like the baby and as such, he finds it hard to be on his own but at the same time, he throws his weight around like a spoiled brat. Once he realised I wasn't going to do anything mean he started to listen and react to my instructions. After 10 minutes, he was walking nicely beside me, backing up and moving away from pressure to turn lovely circles. The whole 'lesson' lasted just over 10 minutes as Flash began yawning and closing his eyes. That was all he could take! I then gave him some hay and sorted out the dreadlocks in his mane. I'm looking forward to more work with him today, but if the added attention sorted him out yesterday, it didn't stop him from escaping again early this morning. He was back in the reserved paddock grabbing grass before I could catch him!