A gallop round the golf course.....

After some serious hailstorms this morning, the sun came out so we decided to get out for a ride. Good thing about hailstones is they slide right off the horses so they don't stay wet. After our usual grooming session transferring as much white hair as possible from the horses to our clothing and hair, we saddled up and set off.

Decided to go for Stinchcombe Hill today, been up there with the dog many times but never made it up there with the horses until now. After a brief stop along the way so the horses could check out the matches going on at the rugby club which for some reason were very interesting, we tackled the track up the hill.

It's very steep, so I got off the old boy and let him take his time. Well worth the effort for the views at the top though.....

...and there was the perfect mounting block waiting for me up there :-)

There were also some perfect hooley tracks and G decided a gallop was in order....

The bridle path goes round the outside of the golf course up there, apart from one bit which goes across the middle, so you do get a bit close to the golfists at times ;-) All that lovely smooth grass does make you want to gallop right across it though, such a waste! But apparently they get a bit upset if you do stuff like that so we were careful to stick to the marked tracks.

Sky was well on form, Ali did a lot of running about but she had brakes and speed control (most of the time)

Some stunning views up there, and not too windy....

 

 

 

Happy days :-)

Why I'm happy to have dirty horses......

Since moving back to the UK there is one thing about the horses that I see here that is really noticeable. They are pretty much all rugged, all of the time. Even when, as it was this last weekend, the weather is sunny and mild and in fact temperatures have been as high as 18 degrees C. We haven't had a cold winter at all, just a very wet one, and that I suspect is a large part of the reason for the extra layers.

When it rains and we get wet, we get cold. Horses don't though. Mine have nice thick waterproof coats that prevent the rain from actually getting through to their skin. You can see in this pic of Gandalf that the white clean bit near the skin is actually dry.

This was taken after weeks of rain. They don't have a field shelter, if it gets really windy the go and hide in the hedges. At night they have to come in to a yard with an open sided barn attached since the landowner doesn't want the horses on the land 24/7 in winter. They are always wet in the morning if it's been raining overnight so clearly don't take shelter in the barn. Unlike the cows they share with!

The other thing about the rain is, well, the mud. Here's how muddy our field has become this winter....

And I reckon this is the real reason for that nice waterproof jacket people seem prepared to spend sometimes hundreds of pounds on. Cos underneath that rug, he'll stay "nice" and clean. Nice for the owner, that is.

But do these owners stop to consider how that horse must be feeling under his rug when the sun is out and the day warms up? When he's losing his winter coat and would love to roll as it's so itchy? Or how he must feel when it's been raining so long the rug is saturated and he can't dry out once the rain stops?

 

Horses don't care how dirty and muddy they are, in fact for Gandalf it would appear the muddier he gets, the better......

 

It's just the humans who care.

 

Someone (who clipped, rugged and stabled her horses) once told me I shouldn't call myself Chevalblanc on the forum we used to frequent as my horses were never white. It would seem that for some people appearance is more important than a horse's wellbeing. Spending a load of money on rugs with pretty patterns on them must make these people feel better, same as tucking their horse up into a nice warm stable at night does. Shame it doesn't make the horse feel better. If you still doubt that, check out this article......

 

Oh, and my horses are white, but only in the summer ;-)

 

 

 

Poor Skysie..... :-(

So recently, young Skyfaxa has finally started to get her act together. After her little strop at the TREC the other week, we weren't expecting too much when we went back to the stables for the half term fun show. To be on the safe side, I entered her in the mini jumping class, and Ali was fully expecting to be beaten by a four year old on a lead rein.

But no, Missy decided she'd be fine with going into the indoor school this time and actually made an effort to jump some of the (tiny) obstacles!

Which meant we felt a bit guilty entering a 13 year old against the tinies, we had to explain why to the other parents, some of whom, having jumped round alongside their 4 year old bouncing about on a small hairy pony, were giving us frosty looks and muttering about unfairness.....especially when it turned out Sky had won!

So Ali immediately started planning more stuff to do, after all, she's rising 5 and will be capable of a bit more than last year when, as always, there's a setback. She came in looking a bit short in front the other night and the next morning was definitely lame in her near fore. Nothing obvious form looking at the hoof, but I suspect there's an abscess brewing. Given our previous experiences with getting them dug out, and the conditions in the field right now, we've decided to just leave it to work its own way out. I think I'm with Joe Camp on this anyway....