Travels with my Donkey

horn. A labelled line drawing, the sort of thing you might have found in a Haynes manual, betrayed 'withers' as merely a drop in the huge and murky ocean of asinine physiology. Everywhere I looked there were pasterns, croups, crests, polls, coronets. Each hind leg alone incorporated a hock, a gaskin and a stifle. There was even an eel, and not where I expected it.
    'The farrier's got a case of laminitis to show you,' said Judy brightly, 'and I'm hoping to find some seedy toe.' The daily health check required smelling a donkey's breath, snipping waxy bits off the inside of his ears, making a 'mental note' of the temperature of each foot and, in the case of a gelding, 'checking round the sheath and cleaning if necessary'. I was introduced to sweet-itch, which if left untreated swiftly transformed any donkey into a four-legged Homer Simpson: bald and yellow. The only remedy — one that aroused the first suspicions that this whole business had been designed as an elaborate joke at my expense — was an all-in-one donkey romper suit fashioned from stout blankets. The other complaints all sounded rather medieval: rain scald, mud fever, quidding and — ow! — sandcrack. 'Bastard strangles' was down as a lymphatic infection, but looked like half a tabloid headline on my pilgrim shame, the other half being 'lovely donkey'. 'If sinusitis becomes really severe,' intoned Judy sombrely, 'then the only effective treatment is facial trepanning.'
    Even as I read through the less invasive remedial techniques that evening it was clear I'd never be able to prepare or apply a single one. I'd hardly find Stockholm Tar in the 'At the Farrier's' section of my Berlitz phrase book. And unless anyone told me different, a 'glucose drench' would mean a bottle of Lucozade up the croup.
    My concept of the donkey as a low-maintenance beast of burden had already been brutally qualified the moment A Passion for Donkeys landed on the doormat. This might have been a book aimed at pre-teenage girls, but though it started with an introduction by Virginia McKenna, it ended with the words, 'See abscesses, castration, lameness, oedema, tetanus.' Now I learnt that donkeys even got sunburn, for cock's sake, which made rather a mockery of their African heritage. And by Christ their guts were fragile. How could the buttercup be a donkey killer? And acorns? 'Yew is also toxic,' I read on the leaflet Judy handed out, 'infected animals usually being found dead.' Most lethal of all was ragwort, an innocuous weed which at various stages of its illustrated life cycle resembled almost everything that grows anywhere.
    There was a whole module on worms: ring, tape, lung. I realised I'd gone past caring when I found myself muttering 'pinworm round his anus' to the tune of 'Lipstick on my Collar'. By the end I was just blankly transcribing overheard words almost at random: scab, zinc, wart, mould, crust, flies, scrotum. On the plus side, I learnt that as I wouldn't be travelling in February or November, there was no need to worry about encysted redworm. Also, only some of the diseases were transmittable to humans. 'Oh, yes,' chirped Judy, aiming a silver-lining smile at me, 'and donkeys can't vomit.'
    With her reservoir of grim pestilence finally drained, Judy led us down to the stables. Here, a stooped but jolly farrier was working away at an infected hoof with a vicious blade, energetically carving off bony shards until the weathered concrete was littered with oversized nail clippings. 'I take it you're not planning to adopt a donkey,' he laughed, seeing me flinch. 'God no,' I said, 'just taking one across Spain.' And with a shocked jerk and a rustic imprecation, he cut his finger.
    Time was running out, and Judy could feel my fear. She ferried me down into the courtyard for a private hands-on tutorial in applying a hoof poultice, and without an audience it was all a bit less Faking It. She ran through the health-care essentials I was likely to need, and what sort of ailments I'd face given what I was doing and where I was doing it. 'At least you won't have a lot of rain and mud,' she concluded. 'They cause most of the trouble.' In my happy ignorance I managed a smile of relief.
    There was a test at the end, two tests in fact. I read the first question — 'Which of the following would tell you that your donkey was healthy?' — and as soon as I saw that this involved a choice between 'limping' and 'bright eyes' I knew I'd pass. But though the certificate I came