Mother's Day Hack.....

Took full advantage of the MIL having the SNO for the day and went riding, naturally. With Tess and Caitlin, Jane & Aliénor. We had brilliant fun, and lots of laughs. Stopped off at some friends' for a quick drink, beer for us, water for the horses......We did several runs up our favourite gallop track (took the third go before the NNP got the message that trying to get in front of Gandalf and making him veer to the side was unacceptable behaviour ) and people swapped around a bit so on the way home, Caitlin rode Maverick, Ali rode Chester and Jane rode.......Coquinette!

Loads more pics here
Must do this again soon......

Funny faces.....

Spent a bit of time in the field with the horses today and there was much yawning going on.......made for some great photos!

"Handy Pony" class

That's what class 8 on this month's Interdressage schedule is called, so we did a bit of practise for that today, just like our Label Loisir stuff......

Seraphina had no problems with most of it, bit reluctant to do the jump, fair enough really, I mean why jump over it when it's less effort to go round it? Got there in the end though....

Gandalf couldn't work this one out at first, til I showed him he could lower his head to go under it!

The NNP, being that much shorter had no such issues......

Flags, check. Tarp, check. Brolly, check. Slalom, check.  Reversing, needs a bit of work......
Hopefully we can get it sorted this weekend as entries have to be by 31st.

We visited the girls

Went down to Sarah's to see the girls again this weekend, they are doing really well at Sarah's. They have grown a bit and filled out, and acquired more spots! They are getting on fine with Sarah's horses, in fact, Sky is getting on a bit too well with Maverick the mini mule......

Sarah has a new horse, Squaw, she is lovely, the three of them make a pretty picture!

Kinna is definitely getting less spindly, still no sign of her tail growing though......

Sarah has been trimming ttheir feet, she did Kinna's this morning, they are looking good. I am going to look into doing some sort of barefoot trimming course myself to be able to do a bit of maintenance between visits from the trimmer.

And as Sky is two years old today, we took her a cake, and Ali sang happy birthday to her, as you can see from the video Sky was more interested in the carrots than the singing......

Really miss those girls......

A Sunday Hack.....

Having gone to all the trouble of organising babysitters etc do to a TREC today, only to be told we couldn't compete cos the horses weren't on the right list at the Haras, (French paperwork thwarts us again) we decided to get together and go out for a ride anyway......

Tess brought Organza and Coquinette over so there were six of us in all. Everything went very well, Seraphina was an angel, Tess brought Organza's old saddle over to try and it's a pretty good fit. We put Caitlin up on her and she was a little bit unsure for the first five minutes but after that she relaxed and just followed Gandalf nicely.

The only slight problem was Organza trying to attack Choccy, she obviously decided C was going to kill her, reared up and poor Tess fell off, so after that C had to go on the lead and for most of the way I had 2 lead lines to deal with........good job I can multitask.......

Went to Montpeyroux and stopped to have our picnic lunch, there was plenty of grass for the horses.....

....but Gandalf still tried to mug Tanya for her lunch!!

Nice long ride today....

Magali at pony club wants to do a day ride with the kids to my friend Marianne's house, which just happens to be next to the horses' current field so I said I'd go and investigate a route for her. Tanya came with me and we found a lovely route mostly through the woods (just as well as it was really hot today!).

We found some stuff that was good practise for TREC (although the stream was very low):

and we met some pretty baby horses

and generally just enjoyed the scenery

When we got back, we gave the boys a shower then they did a nice display of sychronised rolling as soon as we turned them out!

I tracked the route on my iPhone app, we did 17kms in total. The dog is very tired this evening.....!

Seraphina's first ride and lead

Went up this morning to have a go at ride and lead with the NNP. Got her and Gandalf out of the field, Chester neighed a bit at being left behind but obviously wasn't distressed enough to attempt to come with us!

Got Gandalf saddled, Seraphina was having a good look round at everything but didn't seem too concerned, when the neighbour's hunting dogs arrived on the scene at full speed making this dreadful baying noise......she tried to get away, came to the end of the rope, decided to go and hide behind Gandalf instead......thetn I could see her thinking about it, G is so used to them he didn't turn a hair and she rapidly came to the conclusion that they weren't going to eat her.

So we went up to the carriere marked out in my friend Marianne's field, I thought it'd be nice and quiet up there to do a bit of practise, all went well, she wan't bothered by the plastic (I have infected Marianne, she's bringing all sorts of potentially scary stuff up for her horses to look at too!), had a sniff at it and at the plastic bidons in there.

We did a couple of laps of the carriere then suddenly the most enormous salvage truck arrives, presumably to remove some of the junkyard Marianne's neighbour has accumulated in true French style.

Gandalf said "am I bovvered?" and Seraphina again followed his lead. So I rode them past the truck (and the junkyard!) and decided we'd go out for a little walk. Cars, no problem, nor was a man carrying a child on his shoulders (I once had a dog that freaked out at that "A man with two heads!! Help!!"), the only things that occasioned any real concern were the dreaded cattle.....

They started moving towards us, Seraphina actually snorted, just like Maverick does when he sees a donkey, shortly before he bogs off, but they got to the fence and could come no further. So we just stood and watched them for a bit til she relaxed a little, munched a bit of the verge, then we went home.

So a very good first outing with Uncle Gandalf, just goes to show that like Mark Rashid says, "the best teachers aren't always those on two legs"

And when we got back, Ches wasn't even pacing around by the gate, didn't notice us til we were right on top of him, I am very impressed with his confidence these days, what a star!

All change again.....

Took Maverick home today as Jane is back from holiday. Not so well behaved at ride and lead as the babies, you'd think he would be at the ripe old age of 17!!

Anyway, brought Gandalf back and put him in with Chester and Seraphina. Very calm situation, not even a squeal from the NNP, just a bit of trotting around and sniffing. Here's a little video. I love the way that at one point Gandalf showed her his heels as if to say "I'm not going to be a total pushover, you know!" but there was no kicking, biting, thundering about or face pulling.

Think Ches would quite like to play, they were doing that pretending to bite each other thing they do in the trailer and out on rides.......stayed for a while to make sure everything was OK, left them all grazing quietly.

Bag on a stick......

Tried this last week with Seraphina, she wasn't too sure at first

but she soon decided it wasn't going to eat her......

And some video here