More portraits

My artist friend has been at it again, she's done a couple of oils of Gandalf:

I like the second one best.......
More of her work here

Trial run....

...of the Lake Ride today, we did the whole thing. Lovely sunny frosty morning.....

....still sunny by the time we got to the lake nearly 3 hours later, met a nice English couple out walking their dogs, they stopped to admire Gandalf so I got them to take a pic:

However, by the time I'd got round the lake to the beach and stopped for my flask of tea and sandwiches, the clouds had arrived

So after lunch, time for a quick drink and splash in the lake then it was time to go home.

It took 3 hours to get to the lake, 12kms all at the walk, then 2 hours to do the 8km return journey. Not a bad day out.....

All together now.....

Took the boys and girls all up to Bonneville today, Mav was a bit excited but apart from that it went very well! The girls took it all in their stride and were curious about things but not really spooky.

When we went up a steep hill, Mav got a bit silly because he'd rather have cantered up it....

.... so I ended up with both girls for a while and they were very good.

And once we were at the top of the hill it was very windy but they didn't use that as an excuse for being too lively, in fact all they wanted to do was eat.....

We had to go through the woods too, no problem

And then we got to the boys' usual field, the girls couldn't believe their luck! Much running about ensued

It was actually quite fun taking them all out at once once they'd settled down, we're going to do it some more!

More ride and lead

Skyfaxa again today, lovely sunny day. She was a bit livelier than last time but still pretty good really. Only one spook at a loose dog running up behind her (Choccy was with us, she doesn't get a reaction, but this was a different matter, obviously!)

Couple of times she tried to get in front of Gandalf and dive for the grass on the verge so a sharp jerk on the leadrope was in order. Didn't have to do it more than twice, the girl learns fast........

Gandalf, as ever, was a star......take a bow, that boy!

Kinna's turn.....

....to go out on a hack. Poor Gandalf had an extra passenger today:

but he didn't seem to mind! Kinna started out well, but then decided she objected to not being allowed to graze the whole time and pulled lots of faces and showed poor Gandalf her teeth a few times!

Apart from that, she seemed to take the world in general in her stride, at one point a huge dog came rushing out to play with Choccy, Kinna had a good look but seemed to be OK about it, even when it was right under her!

So she went right back to annoying Gandalf......When the teeth came too close to SNO's leg, that was enough and she got off, which left me better able to deal with mademoiselle's shenanigans!

Lots of cars went past, even a moped and Kinna was fine.

After a while, SNO started whining about having to walk, so I put her back on Gandalf and led Kinna home.
Nice afternoon out with my girls!

A more relaxed hack.....

Well, what a difference a day makes! Just got back from a fabulous hack - on Gandalf with Skyfaxa in tow. She was such a good girl, no sillyness, followed along nicely, had a good look round but didn't seen bothered by anything, the only time she spooked was when we went past a tractor with those pneumatic vine trimmers attached, it wasn't the noise of them that bothered her but that the reels were moving as the guys moved further along the vines! Even Gandalf wasn't too keen on getting nearer to them......

We met a nice man out with his dog, he took a pic for me, Sky is intent on getting her head down to graze, hence the expression!

A few more pics:

Went past the same donkeys as yesterday but they didn't seem keen on coming to see us this time!

and when we got back, there were two little faces waiting for us!

Kinna's turn next.......

The Donkeys of Doom......

So earlier I scraped some of the mud off Maverick and Gandalf and went for a hack with a friend, Karen, who's housesitting for the mother in law at the moment. She's not had a lot of riding experience so I put her on Gandalf.


Maverick decided to be a git right from the start. Luckily I'd already briefed Karen and told her that G just ignores his shenanigans.....

He spooked at a road sign, a bird, a piece of (inert) plastic, a man with a wheelbarrow and a cat and that was just in the first five minutes! Then we got into the vines, he immediately decided he wanted to go for a run so we had an argument because Karen can only do walk and trot. At one point he was doing a nice piaffe.....

So we went back out onto the road alongside the vineyard, there were some scary men trimming the vines who had had the audacity to hang their dangerous coats on the fenceposts, there was a pile of terrifying grape skins just SITTING THERE LOOKING AT ME FUNNY, and we went past some other horses who were galloping round, he couldn't cope with that either.

So we went up the steep track up the hill, I thought that might wear him out a bit and he'll have less energy for buggering about. Which was fine until we got to the top and a bloody great white dog launched itself at the fence we were riding past. Off went Maverick, I made no attempt to stop him knowing that just makes him worse and hoped that Karen would have the sense to hold on tight - once Mav had decided to stop (he never goes far) I look back and there's Gandalf just standing there looking at the noisy dog, hadn't budged.

So we carried on, I thought that's the end of the excitement, how wrong could I be?

On the way home we were going down the hill and suddenly we came round the corner to see 5 donkeys in a field. Maverick for some reason is terrified of donkeys. They of course came up to see him, he was actually shaking and no way could I get him to go forward so ended up getting off. He does this incredible snorting like a dragon thing when he's really scared, head in the air, eyes rolling, Karen thought it was hilarious! The donkeys of course found all this fascinating and followed us along the fence which made him sure they were ganging up on him to jump him and eat him......

So I stayed on the ground till they were out of sight......

A couple of pics, couldn't get many as I didn't want to lose my iPhone during a spook.......

The scary sack......

As I have an awful lot of manure to get rid of at the moment, some friends dropped a load of bags round to be filled. One of them was a massive thing usually used for delivering sand and gravel - and moved with a crane! - so decided filling that would be a bad idea.......

As it was nice and noisy and white and scary however, we did a bit of training with it instead.

Skyfaxa, predictably, wasn't bothered one little bit.

Kinna on the other hand was very wary.....

"I'll sniff it......

......I'll even walk on it.......

....but you lift it up and I'm outta here!!"

Ah well, we shall try again another day.....

Checking out a route today.....

...for a trail ride/treasure hunt/trec I am organising next month. Dog very happy to go too, Éowyn not so.......

Lovely trails out in the woods

Weather could have been better though, hence the whingeing from smaller daughter......

Checked out another section of the ride on Gandalf last week:

We really do have some fabulous hacking round here.......