A jumping competition

Just got back from our first experience of a CSO (SJ) comp here, Hollie was entered in the 50cm clear round class and we took Fina along for the experience.

They travelled in style, and we could keep an eye on them the whole way!

As we arrived early, I asked the organisers if Ali could take Fina in the collecting ring before the competitors and they said no problem, so Ali popped her over the practise jumps, she was good as gold......

They said she could stay in when the others arrived so she got used to other horses flying past her all over the place too. She was particularly taken with a big Fjord gelding......

Then we took her over to watch a few rounds in the arena, she seemed to be taking it all in......

Polo and Hollie went in to do their round but unfortunately Polo didn't seem very keen at all, he kept trying to run out and they eventually got disqualified, but Hollie finished the round and got him over everything eventually! It was his first show though and I'm sure he'll be better next time.

Some of the French kids seemed somewhat overhorsed and a fair few of them hit the deck and the horse went careering off round the arena, but it was very well organised and the first class was all done and dusted by 10.30.
There's another one next month north of Bordeaux, so we will give that a go and enter them both.

A day off!

The OH made it home this weekend for one of his rare visits so I got the day away from the SNO, a absolute luxury......

Went out this morning with Ali and Fina, rode Chester in his Western saddle which is possibly the most uncomfortable saddle I have ever sat in. Nice little amble (for me, gotta watch the back) by the river, Ali and Fina (and Choccy) did some hooleying and jumping

Then this afternoon went up to ride Gandalf out with Tess. His new saddle has arrived, and it's a lot more comfy than Ches's!! Organza was a good girl, we even managed to stretch the elastic a bit and got her five whole vine rows away from us :-)

And the best thing about today? No small (but insistent and loud) voice saying "mummy I need a poo!" ......

Jumping lesson....

Tanya and I took the girls for a jumping lesson up at Louise's yesterday, first trip in the new big trailer!
Seraphina was a bit unsure about loading but she eventually figured it out, they load from the side and the ramp is quite steep.......

The ponies behaved very well and were soon unloaded and warming up nicely

First they tackled a cross pole, no problems with that

...but when Seraphina saw her first ever spread, she was not happy! She kept running out until she'd had a good look at it but she eventually got the idea......

SO a pretty good good start for her really, here's a bit of video, complete with outtakes.....

A horsey day in the sun.....

Spent the day messing about with horses, great stuff! Built my first ever jumping course for the girls:

 tried out Tanya's posh new trailer....

.......and poor Sky got put through her paces by the SNO.....

.....not too many confidence problems there!

A couple of days away.....

Went down to Sarah's for a couple of days Sunday and yesterday and had a fine old horsey time. Tess and Caitlin came too. Cait rode Squaw, who didn't want to be cooperative at first, particularly when it came to cantering and jumping, but Cait wasn't having any of it and Squaw soon realised she would get away with nothing!

She did some decent jumping in the end.....

Izzy was a bit hyped up with all these new people around, things go quite exciting for Sarah at one point!

And Ali wanted to ride Mav as usual, he didn't manage to dump her this time

We had lots of tea, wine and curry and lots of fun. The SNO and Tally get on really well, and Felix is still trailing round after Ali, think he's got a crush on her ;-)
I had a little play with Izzy but she was tense the whole time.....

....she's so sensitive though, you only have to think sideways to get her to do lateral work. Bit of a change from Ches!

Sarah has the makings of a great TREC course, we must get some of our horses down there one of these days.......

A black horse for a change.....

My next project looks like being Tess's Merens mare, Organza. She has had a bit of a difficult journey with her horse, because Tess isn't a particularly strict person and Organza is a bossy, dominant control freak.....As Chester has gone back home I have a bit of time to help out with Organza now and I went up to ride her today.

The eventual aim is to get her hacking out alone, which she hates. Shes also not keen on going out and leaving her friend Coquinette behind. So we are starting off with her going out with Tess on Gandalf just calmly at a walk most of the time.

As there is room for only one bossy dominant control freak in my life (me) I had to make a few things clear from the start, like if I leave you standing somewhere, you don't wander off and eat grass (got me a grumpy look) and when I lead you to the mounting block you don't swing your arse around (rebellious look) and we stand still until asked to move off (mutinous look). Also, if Gandalf goes off ahead you wait nicely (murderous look, some skittering about) and you do have to go ahead of him sometimes (how slow can I walk...... what, you want me to trot?!), and looking at stuff funny and going sideways in the hope that such behaviour means we can go home now results in having to do shoulder in (what, on both reins?!)

Apart from that, good as gold ;-)

Riding lessons....

Continuing the quest to find a decent place for the girls to have lessons here that is less than an hour's drive away, we tried a new riding school today, run by an English friend of a friend.

Very small, only 10 or so horses, no sand school, nothing clever, but run by a BHSAI called Louise who is very nice, teaches well and has endless patience for the SNO "Can I trot now, can I, can I?"

Ali rode a nice big horse called, erm, Angey (?), bit bigger than she's used to!

But she enjoyed her lesson on him

Then it was Éowyn's turn riding Mickey. Right from the start she kept saying " Can I trot now?". Louise was very patient with her.....but eventually she did get to trot and she laughed a lot.....

So I have signed them up for a term's lessons, very reasonable prices too, their website is here.

Too clever by half......

Today the girls have disgraced themselves and I  found out that the Naughty Nordic Princess can open doors......

When we had the barn rebuilt, we had a door put in between the garage bit and the horse shelter bit for ease of feeding etc. It's a proper aluminium door with a handle, and usually there's a gate in front of it that cuts the shelter in half and I used to put big bales of hay behind it. But with 4 of them here sometimes, they needed more room in the shelter so I took the gate out. So the other day I noticed Missy chewing the handle a bit but she didn't manage to turn it so I didn't worry too much, she likes to nibble things (have already had to wedge the tap with the hose on closed as she can reach it over the gate and once turned it on in the night and I came down in the morning to a lake )

But whilst I was out this afternoon, she managed to open the door and I came back to find her and Sky in the garage attacking a sack of feed.......luckily it's only low cal balancer stuff, but they'd managed to knock the dustbin over and get the lid off, rip the bag open and scatter it everywhere, before crapping on it for good measure. The goats and chickens had of course joined in the fun.

So I've just spent ages clearing up the mess, after I'd extracted Sky from behind Ali's pushbike, she couldn't work out how to get back past it and was just standing there looking at me waiting for me to move it. Seraphina took one look at me and backed hastily out of the garage door as soon as I opened it........

Thank God they didn't trash the old man's motorbike.......

I have since found the key and double locked that door!!!

Kinna does some long reining.....

The snow is showing no signs of leaving, so I have decided to carry on trying to work the horses regardless. We got out the proper grown up horse stuff today (well alright, the felt saddle we used to have for the pony) and tacked Kinna up.

No problems with that, she's had a saddle on before. Then we added some long lines and went for it.....

And she did really well, I had Ali at her head to start with til she got the idea and then she was fine, despite various distracions and my happy "helper"........good job Kinna knows all about long ropes and how not to get tangled in them!!

Afterwards I took the long lines off and let her wander about witrh the saddle on, so naturally she tried rolling in it, which is why I use the old pony saddle!!! Once she realised she couldn't get rid of it, she gave up and went over to give Chester a hard time......

Quite pleased with that for a first go.

OK, that's enough of the white stuff.....

So we still have snow. It doesn't usually last more than a day here, but seriously sub zero temperatures all week have meant it's all still with us.

This in turn means I've had the kids at home all week as the buses aren't running and the schools are closed. They have now had enough of bracing walks in the cold and snowball fights etc.

Worst of all though, we haven't had any water in the house since yesterday morning, all the pipes out the back are frozen solid and not responding to the hairdryer treatment either.....So I've been melting snow to water the animals, which is hard work, you need a lot of snow just for one bucketful!

Today, after one more of those bracing walks, during which Sky did some skating.....

...but was otherwise happy to get out and about...

...we piled into the car and did a very careful 20kms an hour over to Tanya's, so we could all have a shower and I could fill up some bidons of water for the horses! Then we helped with sledding some water down to her horses....

....and when the farmer arrived with new hay we spent rather a long time stretching the new big bale haynet over it to hopefully slow down consumption a bit! Horses none too impressed with it.....

Snow!

It very rarely snows here in the Dordogne. But yesterday it did, big time!! Seraphina looked right at home......

It froze overnight so was all still there today, but the sun came out. No school for the girls so we went for a walk. Seraphina was in fine form......

......Sky was a bit unsettled to start with, she was especially concerned about this snowman:

But he didn't try anything, so she decided he was safe to walk past!
We did a bit of ditch jumping.....

...and Ali enjoyed cantering on the snow....

And we didn't have to worry about slipping as they're not shod :-)

A haircut and a hack....

The other day on Facebook, someone shared this photo.....

And ever since then Ali has been on at me to try that with Seraphina's mane. I finally gave in and we did this:

Not great really. So I chopped off the top bit and she'll have to live with the zigzags til it grows out. Not that she cares, obviously!

Lots of sunshine today so I dragged the kids out for a little walk. Ali took Fina as she needs to get used to being out on her own. She was pretty good, only tried to turn round and go home a couple of times, but Ali used the one rein flexions that we did last weekend and that seemed to work pretty well......

She did a bit of cantering OK......

....and at the top of the hill, the girls had to play on the big frozen puddle!

Practised some laterals......

......and some TREC!

Hopefully that's worn the kids out so there'll be less bickering now.......!