The puppies are three weeks old today and have trebled their birth weight of 400 grams, which is excellent considering that Meg has ten mouths to feed!
At present we have only two puppies unsold. The others have new homes lined-up in Spain, Britain and several areas of France.
Now that the puppies are three weeks old, we have introduced cereals and milk as supplementary feeding. This causes mayhem in the kitchen as they manage to scatter their weetabix in all directions.
'Miracle' is nearly six months old and has now moved from the baby paddock to join the older horses in the larger field.
He is still drinking gallons of milk from a bucket but is more independent now and enjoys playing with the “big boys” as well as chasing the sheep whom he sees as the perfect-sized playmates.
Thanks to the extra hour of daylight in the evenings, I have managed to 'back' Pasha, the stallion who is the father of Miracle.
Pasha is now four years old and comes from a winning bloodline. It is therefore time to begin his training as either a showjumper or an eventer.
Phoebe has been training him on the ground and the time had come for someone to sit on his back for the very first time. That person, I decided, should be me.
The unexpected outcome of this 'terrifying' moment was that de did not even twitch his ear and just accepted me without a second thought. We have now progressed to walking and trotting around the paddock each evening when I return from the airport.
On the flying side, congratulations’ to Fiona Renton for completing her qualifying cross country. The local weather was dominated by a pressure system which caused poor visibility but this did not deter Fiona who managed to navigate without a problem.
Les King came on one of his 'flying visits' and, as always, offered his knowledge and expertise in helping me produce the English Radiotelephony audio which we will shortly be adding to the Francoflyers website, for the benefit of French flyers who wish to improve their English.
Les, not having flown much in the last year, needed to complete the balance of twelve hours flying for his SEP revalidation.
The original plan was to fly the Robin DR400-180 to England with another club member flying it back but, due to the poor weather forecast 'oop North', Les decided to stick around and complete the task locally.
On the first day, he managed a flight to La Rochelle in marginal VFR conditions and then paired up with newly-qualified Esteban for a trip to Muret, a small airfield to the South of Toulouse.
Last Sunday, being the first day of brilliant weather, they took a trip to Le Mans which was absolutely deserted with not a sound except for the 'roar of the crowd' from the world-famous race track next door.
On the way back, they stopped off at Châtellerault where a friend of Esteban's imports (in kit form), builds and markets the Alpi Pioneer ULM aircraft—www.silvair.fr
Les was lucky enough to be given a 'test drive' in this nippy and highly-manoeuvrable 2-seater which includes retractable undercarriage with electric flaps and trim.
Fuel consumption is around 17 litres per hour.
Like a high-performance sports car, the only real difficulty was getting into the thing.
Stop Press
Last night's AGM of the Aeroclub de Limoges was a quiet affair and went smoothly compared with the mayhem of last year’s meeting—French people can turn very ugly when a meeting overruns by two hours and dinner awaits (faint cries of "fooood" were heard from the English contingent).
Our new President is Christian Dalbin who is presently joint Chief Flying Instructor and head of the engineering department.
Michel Kofyan has stepped down from this position to be Vice President of the Aero Club. Further news on this at a later date.
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