Buster the epileptic goat, as sponsored by the members and friends of the United World Underground. My thanks to all of you who chipped in on that.

afford with our £150. And nobody else wanted to sponsor poor Buster coz he has fits, bless him. But look at him, isn’t he a poppet? Now he has a lovely little plaque on his door proclaiming that somebody loves him. “Sponsored by the members and friends of United World Underground”, it says, or something like that. Hopefully, we’ll be able to keep that up there come the end of August when the year is up. If any of you would like to make donations via us, please do. You can also contact Paula & Ernie directly to find out other ways you can help. Be nice and include some stamps or something, eh?"

By that following August, which would have been 2003, the whole M&E / UWU project was finally collapsing in under its own weight, so we never did renew that plaque. In any event, poor old Buster's fits had become more frequent and he had to be put down around the same time. Incidentally, you're probably wondering what happened to Amos the donkey about now? Nothing, promise, he was still fine. It's just that donkeys were very popular for adoptions anyway, and I felt it more appropriate that money from an underground project should go to a bit more of an outsider. "Who," I asked Paula, "who would be the most unlikely animal here to get sponsored?" She showed us this sad and nervous old goat that suffered fits, so we made sure Buster's door wouldn't be the only one without the name of people who cared about him on it for that final year of his life. Amos soldiered on for a further three years, until his failing lungs finally gave up in the Fall of 2006.

As our lives began to settle into a more ordinary routine, post M&E / UWU, Sam and I had the chance to visit the sanctuary a little more often. Although we couldn't afford another sponsorship with just the two of us, we kept the 'change jar' going, which would generally add up to something in the region of £70 a year, so we could afford to go back to adopting, as we had previously. In September 2004, our next four legged friend chose himself really, Magic The Horsey, who we continued

Our Pete Program visits Hopefield on a trip to England in April 2007.

adopting for three years, until his death in the Fall of 2007. His legs had been getting bad, then one day he'd laid down in the field and couldn't get himself up again. Meanwhile, we'd decided that adopting an animal on someone else's behalf may just make a nice present, so we adopted Shaun the pot-bellied pig for our Pete Program's wife, Paola, a huge fan of pigs. As she'll often tell anyone who'll listen... oh, hang on, we did the 'married one' joke already.

Paola Program tickles husband Pete behind the ears, he likes that...

When over from Italy for Easter 2007, you can imagine who was top of their visiting list. Fortunately, Hopefield are very accommodating about that, you can visit any afternoon between 1 and 4, with the exception of Christmas Day, which we always thought was probably coz Ernie was really Santa Claus. As you can see from the photo, Paola was extremely happy to meet her porcine adoptee's friends...

Robbie, on the other hand, looked decidedly nervous about some of them...

It was always genuinely upsetting to receive the news that yet another of your adoptees had passed away. I can be a right girl's blouse over things like that, so I'd normally deflect with a bit of gallows humour and