Brave Dartmoor Mare

I felt that you should see this,
though there'll be a tear in your eye.
This is about a brave Dartmoor pony

Vets confirmed that she would have been aware of her failing health

who saved her foal before she died.

I wonder what she taught her before she had to leave;
which plants were good to eat, and which ones to avoid?

Having led her to the owner did she whisper in her ear
"My child this is a place of safety and you have nothing to fear."  


This mare led her newborn foal across Dartmoor to her owners' farm. Vets believe that she was aware of her failing health and fought illness and exhaustion to lead her foal to the care of  Lorraine Chambers.  Now the orphaned foal is being hand-reared by neighbour Charlotte Faulkner of the Dartmoor Hill Pony Association, who said yesterday that it was a remarkable story and the foal is alive today because of the instincts of her mother.

“Both mare and foal would have been out there on the moor for the whole summer and would have been brought off the moor in the annual round-up in October,” she said. “She must have known what would have happened to her foal if she had died so she brought her in.”