SOME PLACES ARE difficult to put into words, not because there is nothing to say, but because what makes them special is something you only really understand when you are standing in them.
That was my experience the first time I arrived at Abbeyleix House and Farm. Long before the house was built in the 1770s, the land had already been shaped by the Cistercian Order in the 12th century, farmed carefully, with animals at the centre of daily life.
Animals have always been part of this place, but what has changed over time is not their presence, but their purpose. Now, they are here not for production but for care, recovery and a better quality of life.
The farm is home to over 60 horses and ponies, six of the most wonderful dogs you’ll ever meet, four pigs, 11 goats, four donkeys, three deer, two geese, countless hens, eight rabbits, four guinea pigs, as well as cats, alpacas, sheep, cows and runner ducks.
The vast majority are rescues, each with its own history and needs. It is, to put it simply, a lot of personalities in one place.
Doing this differently
Ireland has a complicated relationship with the way it treats its working and farm animals, and places like Abbeyleix House and Farm matter precisely because they ask a different question entirely: not ‘what can this animal produce’, but ‘what does this animal need’.
I had originally been asked to come down to help with the dogs, which felt comfortably within my remit. After more than 20 years working in animal behaviour, there is a structure to that work I am very used to: assess what is happening, build a plan, implement it and adjust as you go.
A multi-species rescue farm doesn’t quite follow that format, and if I’m honest, I wasn’t entirely sure how useful I would be in that setting. This wasn’t about fitting animals into a system, but about improving how they experience their day-to-day lives, and that felt like a very different place to begin. I went down, met the team, and it became clear quite quickly that this was never going to be just about the dogs.
The goats were among the first I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with, and they are a good example of how misunderstood an animal can be when people rely on received wisdom rather than observation.
They are often described as animals that will eat anything, which is not quite accurate. In reality, they are selective browsers and far more cognitively capable than most people assume.
Research shows they can solve complex tasks and retain those solutions over time, which in practice means they learn quickly, remember what works and are excellent at identifying inconsistencies. Which is helpful from a behavioural perspective, but rather less helpful when the inconsistency they have identified is you.
Enrichment sessions became a race between how quickly I could set up the challenge and how quickly they could dismantle it and eat the prize before the game had technically begun. They were consistently faster.
Happy as…
The pigs required a personal adjustment period. Four rescue pigs, each somewhere north of 200kg, are a very different proposition from anything in my previous experience, and I will admit that my first entry into their enclosure owed more to determined optimism than genuine confidence.
The turning point came via an argument with a gate latch, which I lost. The pigs identified my incompetence immediately and walked out with the calm efficiency of animals who had simply been waiting for this very moment.
I braced myself. They stopped, looked at me once, and went back to sniffing the ground about two metres away with complete indifference. It became clear quite quickly that I had been considerably more worried about this encounter than they were.
No fowl play
The hens are perhaps the species most consistently overlooked in welfare conversations, which is a considerable oversight given how perceptive they actually are. They can recognise dozens of individual faces, have more than 20 distinct calls, including separate alarms for aerial and ground predators, and are built to scratch, forage, dust bathe and move through space as a flock.
Adapting their environment to reflect that made a visible difference. The chicken swing, which I still maintain was a completely legitimate professional purchase, proved surprisingly effective.
Research consistently shows that enrichment reduces stress and improves welfare outcomes, and if the hens are anything to go by, the research is significantly underselling it.
Loving the neighbourhood
The horses have been some of the most rewarding and, at times, most humbling work on the farm. Clara, a pretty grey pony rescued by My Lovely Horse Rescue and rehomed to Abbeyleix House and Farm, has been a good reminder that behaviour rarely exists in isolation from physical health.
When her progress stalled, the brilliant equestrian team investigated further and identified underlying gastrointestinal issues that, once treated, made an immediate difference.
She is now much improved, more comfortable in herself, and engaging far more consistently. She comes when called and will put her nose into the head collar herself, which, for anyone who has worked with a reluctant pony, is no small thing.
The deer have required a much quieter approach altogether. Two arrived following road traffic accidents, one of whom lost a leg and another had been hand-reared to the point where release was no longer safe.
They are animals built entirely around the expectation of danger, and that does not switch off simply because they are now safe. Their responses are fast, their threshold for alarm is low, and trust, once broken, takes a long time to return. You learn quite quickly that patience is not a virtue in this context so much as a requirement.
Hare raisers
One of the smaller successes has been with the rabbits. Rosie arrived (via Rabbit Rescue Ireland) having been dumped and left to fend for herself, and is now settled and bonded with Guinness, a rescue with a well-established reputation for finding other rabbits deeply unimpressive.
It is not dramatic work, and it won’t make headlines, but watching an animal move from survival mode into something that actually resembles comfort is its own kind of progress.
The dogs deserve their own mention. Earl and Dory are ex-racing and coursing greyhounds, TinTin a wolfhound with a very generous interpretation of personal space, Cooper a pointer mix, Monkey, a Labrador, and Oliver a dachshund mix who has no awareness of his size and no interest in developing any.
Between their trainer, and myself, we have been working on the fairly ambitious project of turning this group into farm dogs, which means staying calm in the yard, greeting people without flattening them, and sharing space peacefully with deer and cats.
For Earl and Dory, who spent their working lives chasing things, learning that the farm cats are off limits has required some genuine patience from everyone involved. TinTin, meanwhile, continues to hold a broad view of what counts as edible.
Integrating animals into a farm
Across all of these species, the same challenge keeps surfacing: not identifying what would help the animal, but working out how to implement it within the reality of a busy farm, where time is limited, and conditions are rarely ideal.
The work becomes about fitting what we know into what already exists: building enrichment into feeding rather than creating extra tasks, teaching animals to come to you rather than chasing them, and creating enough predictability that both animals and people can move through their day with less friction.
Low-stress handling has long been associated with improved welfare and safety, and in practice, it also makes life easier, which is often what determines whether something continues. One unexpected benefit has been the opportunity for education.
School visits, open days, and outreach to explain why enrichment matters, why animal needs extend beyond food and shelter, why behaviour is communication rather than defiance. Helping to change broader public understanding of animal cognition and welfare.
And then there is everything I have learned that was not, strictly speaking, in any curriculum. I have developed a considerably greater awareness of where my feet are in relation to hooves.
I have learned that mud is not a surface you step into lightly so much as a long-term commitment, and that there are multiple levels of outdoors, most of which I had not encountered before arriving here.
I have split my trousers while climbing a fence. And I have had a pony called Stefan remove my phone from my back pocket at considerable speed and disappear across the field, leaving me to negotiate its return out of breath, covered in mud, and without a great deal of dignity.
I am still, very clearly, not a farmer. But I am considerably less of a liability than I was when I started, and I have enjoyed every minute of it.
What has made all of this possible is the openness of the team at Abbeyleix House and Farm and their willingness to try things that are not standard practice. They have put up with my enthusiasm, my ideas and my occasional lack of practical farm sense with warmth and patience, stepping in when needed and quietly guiding me without ever making me feel like I was getting in the way.
I have learned a huge amount from them, not just about farm life, but about judgment, timing and the skill of doing things well without needing to make a show of it. I would hope, in return, that I have brought something of value too, even if it is only a slightly different way of looking at what animals are capable of when given the opportunity.
The farm is still evolving, and there is always more to do, but what stands out is that welfare is not treated as an afterthought here. It is built into the way decisions are made, even when those decisions are difficult.
For me, being part of that has been one of the most amazing experiences of my career, and I feel incredibly lucky. Good welfare, I have come to understand, doesn’t come from perfect systems. It comes from small, consistent changes that make life easier, safer and more predictable for the animals living within them.
And occasionally, it comes with the added benefit of learning how to retrieve your phone from a pony who has absolutely no intention of giving it back.
Suzi Walsh is an expert dog behaviourist and dog trainer. She has an honours degree in Zoology and a Masters in Applied Animal Welfare and Behaviour from the Royal Dick School of Veterinary. She has worked as a behaviourist on both TV, radio and has also worked training dogs in the film industry.