The pony grabbed the bag of carrots and ran across the field with it in her mouth, tail in the air, munching on the entire thing, including, of course, the plastic.

She was so pleased with herself there was no way I was getting near her. She ran around in circles, bucking and cavorting and flinging the bag about in her mouth, stopping occasionally to chew, as I ran one way, then another to try to catch her.

‘No no no no no! I can’t take any more!’ I begged her, because the spaniel is under the vet with suspected ‘about to fall of her perch’itis. I’m calling it that because she’s old.

She’s eating and going for walks and quite chipper. She’s enjoying what will no doubt turn out to be her last days. She’s on steroids, prednisolone, and the effect varies. Some days she is so talkative she refuses to sit still or stop demanding things, and then other days she just wants to lie on her back with her legs in the air snoring.

I had to rush her to the vets dehydrated after an upset tummy. I didn’t know if that was the end when I left her with him. He called me a few hours later: ‘Well…’ he paused and my heart stopped, ‘she’s pulled two drips out, but we got the third one in. She doesn’t appreciate our hospitality. You can come and get her.’

She keeps rallying. I’m rather taken up with it. The last thing I need is for one of the other creatures to colic itself. So I begged the pony: ‘Please! Don’t swallow that bag!’ And I darted this way and that as she ran me around.

The pony is a genius at finding and stealing things. The bag of carrots had been hidden at the bottom of a tack box behind the mounting block, tucked underneath several brushes.

I was grooming Darcy tied by the gate, the pony mooching about behind us as usual. I could hear her flinging head collars and brushes about and kept turning around to grab things back from her mouth.

The pony wants a job, is the problem. She is so keen I feel bad for her living a life of leisure as Darcy’s companion. When we are jumping, she stands by the side of the jumping field eyeing Darcy’s moves, as if to say, ‘I could do that’, and afterwards I sometimes let her have a go. Because she is too small for me to ride, I put her on a long lunge line and let her run at the jumps, which she does with gusto, flinging herself high in the air with a squeal of delight.

Ideally, I would find a keen child to ride her, but the chances of finding a sensible parent in Surrey who would bring their child a couple of times a week to enjoy a ride on a super fun pony without suing me for this pony throwing their child off occasionally are so slim I am not going to take them. Also, knowing pony, she would introduce herself by nibbling the child’s jacket or ripping the shirt off their back, so it’s not a good idea.

She’s a cheeky little Welsh mountain type, and while we used to ride these sorts and fall off them with abandon almost daily when I was a child, I get the feeling things have moved on and mothers nowadays do not approve of their children being flung about like rag dolls.

I chased and chased that pony. I offered her more carrots, and a bucket of feed, but she had her swag. Finally, she stood there out of my reach and, with a look of absolute defiance, she chewed the carrots inside the plastic in front of me, and swallowed everything, including the bag.

‘You…’ And I confess I called her a rude name. She chewed, coughed, spluttered, then stood there with a puzzled look on her face. I got my phone out of my pocket and looked for the horse vet’s number. ‘Fine,’ I muttered. ‘That’s just fine. That’s just absolutely brilliant.’

And then the pony coughed again and when I looked at her there was something on the ground. I walked over and picked it up and, to my amazement, I was holding the once see-through One Stop carrots bag, now perfectly orange. It was concertina-shaped, with hundreds of lines in it where it had been through a comprehensive pressing process.

Somehow, pony had internally separated and digested the carrots, then ejected the plastic wrapping, like the processing machinery of a factory production line.

She looked at me calmly as I held the bag in my hand as if to say: ‘Is there a problem?’