Boot camp

Ali's been a bit frustrated recently at the lack of opportunity or venue to do any work with Sky, and Sky has been a contrary little git about going forwards out hacking, so I decided to try something different today. Found this place via a group on FB and it's only half an hour's hack from us, in fact we've ridden past the road down to it many a time, didn't know it was there.....

Annoyingly, as the crow flies, it's 5 minutes away, but someone very inconsiderately put the M5 between it and our yard....

Anyway, Sky was her predictable nappy self on the way there (I followed in the car) and got very excited when she saw another horse on its way back ahead of her, so by the time we arrived she was all hot and bothered. I had warned the instructor, Sarah, what she can be like......but she was cool and just said take her in the school and we'll see what happens.

Sky pranced off snorting and neighing but settled quite quickly - and as soon as she realised she was having to do some work, she resorted to trying to stop and nap to the gate, then to the barn at the far end where some other horses were......this is, according to Sarah, because her basic schooling isn't in place and she doesn't unquestioningly go off the rider's leg. So the rest of the session was spent concentrating on not letting her get away with any stopping and in the end she kinda got the message.

 

Sarah recommended we take a dressage whip out and use it to reinforce the leg aid if she doesn't listen. She also immediately asked why she wasn't ridden in a bit......

So am I being to "fluffy" with Sky? Should she have done more lunging as a youngster (another recommendation)? I don't know. What I DO know is that Ali really enjoyed the lesson, got a lot out of it and wants to go back next week, so that's what we'll do.

Your Horse Live

Now we're in the UK, many events we never used to be able to get to are now merely a wait in a motorway traffic queue away......yesterday we decided to make the trip up the M5 to Your Horse Live. Quite a good day out, but not the best event I've been to all year.....

Took us half an hour to get into the car park, which was a muddy field at 10 am and by the time we came to leave, they'd had to get some tractors out on standby to drag cars out, luckily we were very near the hard track so managed to get out unaided (my old car would have needed help from a tractor )

Once inside, I couldn't believe just how much shopping there was, more even than at Olympia.......We had a job fighting our way through the crowds oohing and aahing over the sparkly browbands and embroidered jackets to actually get to an arena. At one point we nearly walked into Charlotte Dujardin wearing a huge furry headband thing......

The smaller arena was good, you didn't have to queue for ages like for the main arena. We saw Jason Webb in action, I like him, have seen his bridleless riding vids online before. He did a demo on his horse Diesel and they clearly have a great relationship. He was bridleless, guiding him with his seat and a long whip for showing direction and he was refreshingly honest about this being a work in progress and what had worked well at home wasn't working so well in front of a crowd elsewhere (as the horse charged round the arena without listening to him at first) but he stuck with it and got there in the end.

Ali really liked him so went to get his autograph afterwards

We listened to a few people in the equine Learning Zone, there was a Q&A session with Carl Hester, Jason Webb, Paul Tapner & Ben Hobday...

Outside they had the Rescue Village, with all the charities bringing some inmates along, and Hovis, of Horse and Hound fame, was there, looking very fed up with being shut in a stable and kicking the door to bits....

Then we went to queue up for the main arena to watch Paul Tapner in action. He did a quick masterclass on riding cross country fences.....

But most importantly, we saw the guys from the Centre of Horseback Combat again, and I treated myself and Ali to an early Christmas present :-)

Don't know if we'll go to YHL again though, as I said, too much shopping and not enough horses for my liking........