Whereas Tess is usually very mistrustful of strange dogs who are allowed to roam willy-nilly all over the place when off their leads and who are similarly allowed to just bound headlong across to her (all because, I might add, she’s learned the hard way that some of them can be extremely unfriendly, if not downright nasty….though, apparently, that’s entirely my own fault, according to their often extremely belligerent owners, because I have Tess on a leash most of the day), she doesn’t have any problems whatsoever with horses and two of her best friends in all the world both happen to be particularly tiny examples of the incredibly hardy, Thelwell-type Shetland Pony. One of them, “Blackie”, is entirely black and he and Tess love nothing more than to run free together in his paddock when we go to visit. The other, “Blondie” (pictured here), never fails to run the length of her field to greet Tess as soon as she sees her. This is inevitably followed by much excitement and a great deal of mutual sniffing and (at least as far as Tess is concerned) uncontrollable tail-wagging.I suppose that it’s fairly unusual behaviour for both types of animal, but I never tried to discourage it once it had become obvious that they were being friendly towards each other and were keen to be together. Besides, if Tess has been made to feel so wary of most other dogs through repeated unfortunate experiences, then at least this enables her to enjoy the companionship of animals who she feels she can actually trust….however unusual that companionship might seem to be to the increasing number of people who think she’s just a very peculiar and strangely affected dog….Although I did say to one lady recently who had been rather too quick to criticise Tess’s behaviour, that perhaps she wouldn’t be quite so damning of either Tess or myself if it was she and her own sickeningly pampered pooch who were hopelessly lost on some featureless moorland or on a bleak mountainside in a killer storm or in a white-out blizzard or freezing fog and it was Tess who risked her own life to go and find them and drag their sorry a*ses back to safety, but after that comment, I was immediately informed that I was being both ridiculous and downright rude!