Looking After a Donkey, by Dorothy Morris

We didn't have much time to prepare for our donkeys; we'd been losing the sheep to predators, and had mentioned needing some sort of guard animal to keep our herd safe. My MIL took this on as a mission (this was one of her more rational ones), and found us not one, but two. DH knew he wouldn't have the time to spend with them (training or standard status checks), and I have little to no equine experience (early readers may remember the one about Hercules the Thumb-Bandit). If we'd had a chance to wait, and to prepare better, I might have chosen another title.

Anyway, I was a good little consumer and dutifully kneeled at the altar (my laptop) to beseech the dieties (at Amazon) for words of salvation (this book). I read this out of necessity (I desperately needed to know how to cope with our donkeys) about a month ago. I found it to be moderately helpful. It was published about 20 years ago, and it is U.K.-centric, so the donkey organization information is only relevant in the sense that I can now go find their website in hope of more detailed health and care information. Some of the advice given assumes that the reader has some (what I would consider advanced-intermediate) knowledge on how to handle equines. Morrison tries to cover everything in 140+ pages, and I'm sure there's so much more that the new owner needs to know. A good third of the book is devoted to breeding and foaling, which to me seems heavy, but I realize that the author is writing from that standpoint and has good advice in those aspects. So, I’ll be searching for another book, and I’ll be begging for handling lessons from my neighbor or one of DH’s college buddies.