I have recently returned from a short period of working at the Gambia Horse and Donkey Trust where I took this video of one of the charitys donkeys - Ingrid - proving that she is quite the problem solver! Ingrid came into the charity because her foal, Matilda, had suffered from a terrible skin condition which her owners then put engine oil onto in the hope that this would help. Although Ingrid was healthy, she was quite aggressive towards people and injured one of the GHDT staff quite badly with one of her kicks. Since then the staff and volunteers have worked hard to gradually gain her trust and as a result she is now a very friendly and cheeky little donkey! She likes to always know what is going on and enjoys having a good scratch from passing humans. There was much confusion one morning when the feed room door was wide open and the donkeys managed to get inside. The staff insisted that they had locked the door so I spent some time watching to see what happened when we closed it. I then discovered that Ingrid had learnt how to open the latch, and she even very quickly learnt how to remove the padlock which we slipped through the lock for extra protection! Just prior to this video she had removed the padlock and opened the lock with extreme accuracy making almost no mistakes and taking less than 30 seconds. I think this time she was a little put off by me standing there, and the flies were also bothering her so the video doesnt really do her justice, but it does help you to see that she has good problem solving skills!
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 15:52:13 +0000