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Welcome back to my little hideaway in the Carpathian Mountains. Maybe I should start calling this place a ranch though, because so many animals have been making this place their permanent or temporary home lately. There's your little mouse. In today's episode, I somehow end up with a rescue mouse and another rescue dog, as well as a sick horse. Well, let's go and dive into the story.
So, you know how I've always said that I didn't want to have kids? I don't know if you know this, but that's that's what I've always said. Well, it is 6:00 in the morning and I am just waking up in my pretty cold wintry tent. And I need to get out of my warm bed, go out to the pasture, and give my horse medicine, start today's medicine protocol for my horse. So, why don't you want to have kids? Whenever ask me this question, I can usually list about 10 different reasons for my decision, but one of the biggest ones has always been this. Being a mother comes with a huge mental and emotional load. I just don't want to
have to shoulder that load. And yet, now the joke's on me really, because when your animals get sick, that emotional load can be just as heavy. It's been 1 hour and I need to go back out onto the pasture. Bliss is sick, unfortunately. She has gastric ulcers, which are pretty common in horses, but quite painful and an extreme pain in the butt to treat. All day care from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. for a couple of months. That's what it takes to cure Bliss's condition. In case you're wondering why she's wearing a muzzle like a dog, it's because she needs to take her medicines on an empty
stomach and given that she lives on a pasture, this is the only way to prevent her from eating for an hour or two. A sick horse is not that different from a sick kid or dog in the sense that their sickness does become the center of your universe for a while. And in a 1 hour we do this all over again giving another medication and then in total we do it four times a day every single day. Totaling about actually about 10 visits to the horse every single day. How do people do this if they don't live 10 m away from their horses? I don't understand. And how do people do parenthood? [snorts] Cuz parenthood is like this but for like 8 years probably
until the kid gets a little bit independent. Not just a month, 8 years. [snorts] No a thank you. I quite like being in bed [snorts] in the morning without having to get out of it to administer medication or food. I don't know how people do this stuff long term. Hi buddy. Yeah, go on. Yes, hello. Go and touch. Good morning. There's one thing that I've been that has been like giving me a lot of cause for concern. Not actual concern, but just more like it's been playing on my mind is look at this. He look at this 4 and 1/2 years old and he has these little white hairs around his muzzle now.
Just a few. More than my own mortality. It's his mortality that scares me. You want to get up? You want to get on? Are you just comfortable like that? Is that really comfortable? Well, my morning just got really interesting because look what I have found outside and put in my sock. It's your little mouse. Look at the little mouse. You see that? So, I found her in the horse trough in a little puddle of water. And she looked pretty lifeless, but when I picked her up to kind of like take her out of the horse trough,
she was actually moving a tiny bit. And I was like, "Oh my god, you're actually alive." So, then I brought her in here, put her in my sock, and I've been trying to warm her up for the last hour. And she's actually becoming more and more animated. There's more and more movement, so she's getting warm. Hopefully, I can bring her back to life and then set her free again. Honestly, what is it with these animals? My neighbor has hens, which means that I get beautiful, super organic, all natural hen eggs. Oh my god, this is like one of the highlights of my life here, honestly.
Oh my god, so good. I don't think this mouse can spend her entire life inside my sock. So, I'm going to put her in this little box. A little bit of hay. I'm going to make some breathing holes in it. Breathing holes. Get out. Get out of here. No, Vic. Oh, man. I just broke the box. Well, hopefully she doesn't notice. What do you know that something is up, right? You don't like peanut butter. Yeah. That's what I thought.
Put a peanut butter in there. [snorts] I'll squish you. Oh, here we go. Oh my gosh, look. Well, she's in the box. So, now that she's all dry and now that she's woken up a little bit, I can see that this is probably in fact a dormouse. And if you know anything is that I have had a very complicated relationship with dormice because they have literally chased me out of my shepherd's hut. Oh god. Oh my god, buddy. And now I've got a little helpless dormouse here in need of help. What do we do? Of course we help her.
This dormouse should be hibernating right now with her dormouse friends. October is a time of transition here in the Carpathians. It's when the leaves turn into their most beautiful and vibrant colors. The world starts to look like a painting, but the days are getting shorter and the nights much colder. In the mornings, more often than not, a layer of frost covers the grass. You can feel the autumn deepening and the natural world slowly preparing for a long, quiet winter sleep. Today is a bit of a day off, so Shaman and I are going to go for a ride in the mountains. Here he is. He could really use the exercise because he is a little bit chunky. Look at that belly.
Um so yeah, I'm a little bit nervous to leave Bliss, Milk, and the dormouse [clears throat] all alone, but I think they can hopefully handle us being gone for 1 hour. Right? Like all my animals have separation anxiety in some way. You know, I really hate sharing really any horsey things on the internet because people just have so much to say and they really can kill the joy in just enjoying the time that you have with your horse, be it groundwork or just simple handling or riding, whatever you do. So, I'm not going to be doing this very often, but yeah.
I'm going to do a little warm-up, a warm-up session with my boy. Boy. In my last video, a lot of you were asking about winter. Is it really feasible to live in a canvas tent when the temperatures plummet and the snow starts falling? Well, technically, yes, you can live in a tent like this in the cold months as long as you have a heat source like a wood stove or a powerful heater.
Now, I don't think I'll spend the winter in the tent. Paradise. I'm still hoping I can get the roof of the shepherd's hut renovated in time before snow so I can move back there. Besides, with the dormice now going in for a winter sleep in the forest, the shepherd's hut is actually about to become livable again. And before I move on to an update on the dormouse and the new rescue dog, I just wanted to remind you that my memoir, The Wilder Way, outlines just how I got to this place from living a very different, very conventional life in London 10 years ago.
It's now available in Dutch and German as well, and the Polish translation, which I worked on personally with the translator, is coming out on the 12th of November. If you're Polish, zapraszam do lektury. Oh, and also I'm continuing my book tour in Germany and Poland this November. So, if you scan the QR code on the screen, you'll be able to see the dates as well as links to buy the book in the US, UK, and internationally. It means so much to me whenever I see you guys reading The Wilder Way. Thank you so much. And here's a little unexpected dormouse update. When I got back from my ride and went to check up on her in her box, she was gone. Don't think she's here. And that's probably a good thing because it means she had managed to recover. Turns out all she needed
was a little bit of body heat. Roam free, little dormouse, and don't you dare come to my house. Not there. I feel like this summer and fall have been all about animals. And there's another dog story that I haven't told you about yet. I posted it on Instagram, but I didn't really film much of it for YouTube because I just felt so overwhelmed as it was happening that I just I felt like I couldn't pick up the camera and film. And what happened was that once Atlas, the abandoned German Shepherd that I had rescued, had gone to his new family, I don't know, I just had this feeling that another dog would show up at my doorstep and that Atlas had to go to that family to make room for another dog. I just I had a feeling I couldn't
explain it. It was just a feeling I had. And then sure enough, a few days after Atlas's departure, I was driving to town and just a couple of miles away from the spot where I had found Atlas, I saw a dog. This dog was roaming the street, just looking really disheveled, really unkempt, and lost. And so obviously I stopped to see if he had like a collar on or anything to identify him. Well, he didn't. But while Atlas was really hesitant for me to let him catch him, this dog just followed me right into my car.
He literally just followed me and I lifted him into the car and there he was. Frankly, I felt like I was about to have a nervous breakdown because I just couldn't believe that someone could dump this beautiful, lovely, super friendly dog. I mean, I don't know how people can dump any dog, but this was just I don't know. I just felt emotional. my car. What is wrong with people? He is so adorable. So, I took him in. I took him to the vets. I fed him. I gave him shelter. I went on walks with him. I tried to socialize him, keep him company. And I even gave him a shave. Well, I didn't give him a shave, but I took him
to a groomer's who completely transformed this dog. You know, when I first found him, he looked kind of like a sheepdog, but after the groomer visit, he looked more like a giant Maltese. Very cute. Initially, I named this dog snowflake, but his name quickly changed. So, within a couple of weeks of me finding him, snowflake actually found his new forever home. You may remember my very close friends Kasia and Leszek who run these beautiful mountain chalets not too far from where I live, and well, they didn't take the dog, but Kasia's parents took the dog and named him Buddy. So, Buddy now lives in the Polish mountains a couple hours drive from where we are and he seems to be
really, really loving his new life. He's got new parents that absolutely love him to bits, a huge garden, in fact, a massive piece of land, some horse friends, and from what I've been hearing, he has really been adapting so well to his new home. So, I guess it was just meant to be. Now, I don't think I can go into like the business of rescuing animals long-term because it's just very, very difficult having so many animals to take care of. The two horses that I have are already quite a bit to take care of, especially with Bliss being sick. The responsibility that's on my shoulders is quite enormous. My day taking care of the horse starts at 6:00 a.m. and ends at 10:00 p.m. every single day. And that's just the horse. And then add
to this the fact that Viðarr doesn't really like other dogs very much. So, I just know that if I If another dog came on my doorstep and I felt like I needed to help them, I just know that most likely that dog would never be able to actually stay with me. So, you know, the best that I can do is going to be to foster that dog and give him a temporary home. So, this is the thing. I've never wanted human kids, but I do feel like part of my mission here on Earth is to give animals a better life. And again, I'm not saying that I'm going to be rescuing animals now. That's going to be my thing from now on. Not at all. But, I want to say that if an animal does come to me, I will never refuse to help that
animal. And there's a relationship that I have with my horse Shaman especially and obviously with Viðarr that feels so incredibly profound and so deep. I sometimes struggle to find the words to explain it, but I just feel like, you know, parents might say that I may never experience the love that a mother has for her child. But, what I'll say to that is that instead, perhaps instead, I experience an incredibly profound relationship with some animals. I'm not going to bore you with the details of how I feel like I genuinely communicate and speak with my horse. It feels almost too woo-woo to even mention on here on YouTube. But, trust me when I say that this horse is not just an animal. It's not just a horse.
This horse is my guardian. I guess the main thing that I wanted to say in this context is that I feel like yeah, we can make all these different choices. We can have human kids or we can have animal kids and who is to judge which love is more profound, lasting and rewarding. Which love feels more unconditional and whether we can even compare different types of love. Aren't they all just a beautiful emotion that enriches our lives and that makes us better humans? Love is love no matter if it's for another human being, your own child or an animal. It's all about how you receive and give that love.
Okay, right now I need to prep dinner for both Shaman and Bliss gets a special dinner with some extra herbs and supplements because she's sick. You know, these last couple of years have been such a steep learning curve. Like living out here and then taking care of animals has just been a whirlwind, honestly. You know, Shaman used to live with my friends and so I never really had to think about things like taking care of a horse on a day-to-day basis and the kinds of skills, like actual hard skills, like knowing about nutrition, skills that you actually need when you own horses. I feel like I'm trying to squeeze, you
know, like a life's worth of knowledge in terms of land management, animal husbandry, taking care of horses, training horses, a million things. I'm trying to squeeze all of that into like one season. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, honestly. Not going to lie. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, but I wouldn't change it for the world. Dinner time. Let's bliss. Come on. Dinner time. Look, there they come. Come on. Dinner time. Here it is. Hang on. One moment. Let me just put that in your spot. In your stall.
Once the horses were fed and it got dark outside, I still had a couple of chores to do on the pasture. Holy what is that animal? But when I looked up into the forest, I saw something a little unsettling. Do you guys see that? A pair of eyes fixed on me in between the trees in the darkness. There's a pair of eyes up there in the forest. You see? Honestly, I do worry sometimes about wolves being drawn to the scent of horses out here, but the forest is full of different kinds of animals. I want to go investigate, but I'm a little nervous.
Yep, Vilkas caught onto the scent. Yeah, it's a little creepy sometimes, but generally, I just need to convince myself that there's nothing out there that could really hurt a human. Oh, it was just a deer. I can tell by the way that he or she leapt off or [snorts] leapt off, I should say. Ah. There's one little bit of fencing that I need to secure and it's really not even fencing per se, it's just this little section where there's a an ancient hut. Very dilapidated as you can probably see in the dark a little bit. I just don't want the horses going in there.
You see all this rosehip? This is gold. Absolute gold. Oh, it's so tasty, huh? It's like candy. He's a good boy. Yeah, I know this is scary. Up there we go. You want some candy? Oh, yeah, it's so tasty. The other week I had like 30 big bales of hay delivered um for the winter and for the spring and basically until next summer. So, they're all kind of like tucked away behind the shed the shelter. You can see some of them over there. But before I start using those, I'm going to use I'm going to try and use up my own hay. Though I'll admit that the horses have not been super keen on it.
Probably because I harvested it quite late. You like the hay? Yeah, it's so tasty. Good boy. If there's anything I'd like for this video to communicate into the world, it's that love is love. Whether you give it to a human, a mouse, or a dog, it doesn't really matter. That oxytocin, that positive energy, that tenderness, it all impacts us profoundly and makes the world a slightly better place every time we give and receive love.
