Latest French update.....

Easter holidays are here, which means we could go back to France, sadly this time only for a few days but it was great. We made really good time down the motorway on Saturday so naturally went straight to the stables so Ali could have a quick lesson. When we arrived, the previous group was still in the school, including Diane-Claire riding Kinna.  Kinns turned and watched us walk over from the car, stared for a bit, then sauntered over to the gate to say hello! She had to be reminded that she was supposed to be working, and eventually did some jumping with Diane-Claire, she seems totally at ease with it all, not a Tigger bounce in sight....

Then it was Ali's lesson, and she was really good, none of last year's arguing, she clearly now knows her job and gets on with it. Maybe there's some hope for Sky after all.....?

Ali seemed pretty pleased anyway

Then a couple of days later, Ali and I went down to Sheila's to see Fina. She was on form, jumping her trademark huge jump, and not being too worried by the big green ball

Went for a nice walk/hack with Sheila and Lucie in the sun. Ali says Fina felt marvellously relaxed. So nice to see the ponies looking happy and fluffy in the sun. Miss them........

A lot has changed....

So it's new Year's Eve, traditionally time to look back over the last year, a lot has changed for us in the last year. In January, we said goodbye to our lovely Fina as she went to her new home with Sheila in the Lot. When we went to visit a few months later, it was clear she'd settled in well and was happy with her new life.

She'd grown her hair too, suits her......

 

Ali and I then started the sometimes hazardous job of teaching Kinna how to behave, she began the year with many tantrums and arguments.....

Slowly she started to realise that some cooperation would result in an easier life, although she continued to express her opinions........

Sky too began her ridden career, and she also had her moments......!

Mr G was as ever, the perfect gent and took the girls' antics in his stride.

He may or may not have been impressed when after Kinna departed to Sarah's for summer school, she was replaced with another baby, the Blonde Bombshell.....

Towards the second half of the year, we made the decision to relocate back to the UK so some decisions needed to be made. As it was apparent that Kinna wasn't going to grow as much as we'd hoped, we asked Carole up at the riding club if she'd be interested in taking her on, and so off she went. She's now having to work for a living, being schooled by Carole and hacked out by her husband, John, who has his eye on her for a bit of endurance.

And so after 8 years of having horses in France, Gandalf, Sky and Tari moved with us to the UK in December.

And here we are, in Gloucestershire, the horses seem to like their new digs (although they still have some reservations about the cows). The hacking here is.....different, I miss the ease of riding through the vines and the hacks to the river or the lake, but the countryside here is just as scenic and we're looking forward to discovering more of it.

So here's to a good year in 2014, well, it should be, after all, it is the Chinese Year of the Horse!

Seraphina and some thoughts.......

Just got back from a couple of days away visiting Seraphina and her new owner, Sheila.

It was lovely to see Fina and Sheila's Camargue mare, Lucie, so settled together. Ali rode Fina in the rope headcollar for the first time in ages and needed a lesson from Sheila on how to do it properly first....

She needs to stop being so quick to reach for the reins and to think about using her bodyweight, seat and position to influence Fina more. Take away the bridle and the gaps in her "traditional" lessons at pony club start to emerge. With no bridle or bit, Ali needed to come up with other ways to hold Fina's attention and ask her to do what Ali asked rather than just going with her own ideas such as getting her head down for grass or going out the gate back to Lucie.

Sheila is an excellent teacher, very calm and considered. Ali of course responds better to other teachers than her annoying old mother. But being Ali, she is often away with the fairies, and this lack of intent is of course picked up by the pony and results in hesitancy, as you can see from this video clip:

Once Ali decided to pop her over a little jump and therefore had a clear aim in mind, things went a lot better (although being Fina, she ran out at first and Ali had to rethink her strategy, which she did admirably)

We need to do the same with Sky at home I think, as well as more groundwork, something else that doesn't feature much in lessons at the club.

The next morning we went for a lovely walk in the woods, Sheila has some excellent hacking round and about. I got to lead Lucie some of the time and it was really interesting dealing with an unknown horse who spent a fair amount of time testing me to see what she could get away with and whether I was up to the job of being in charge!

Ali went off for the odd hooley or two and found a handy fallen tree to jump and thoroughly enjoyed herself :-)

Miss that little yellow pone, but really glad she's got a fab new home :-)

More about that on Sheila's blog here

Out of my comfort zone.....

So the people up at the stables are on holiday for a couple of weeks and guess who got the job of doing riding lessons?

Decided to put the girls through the torture I'd suffered at their age, namely jumping with no stirrups and reins, and naturally, they loved it....

And so for the second session this week I saddled up the old boy to see if I could have a go without falling off. I'm no good at jumping, never have been, (more on that here) but they seemed to be enjoying it and I thought if I'm supposed to be teaching them I ought to lead by example......and it did look like fun......

And actually it was!

I even pointed G at a bigger jump before I'd really given myself time to think of a reason not to and we managed it OK

Be a while before I could contemplate tackling that one with no stirrups though.....

In other news, Sarah tells me Kinns is looking a lot better and Sheila came to visit yesterday and asked me to sign Seraphina over to her so now I know our star girl has a brilliant forever home. Happy :-)

Visiting the girl....

Went to visit Seraphina on Thursday, as it's the school holidays and Ali wanted to go and see her. Tess and Caitlin came along for the ride and we had a nice fun day with lots of laughing and gossiping....

When we got there the girls were calmly grazing together. This is a good thing since when I was there a couple of weeks ago to pick my trailer up, the new girl, Tayenne, was systematically breaking out through the fence and disappearing into the woods. Probably "encouraged" by Fina who has decided she is once again in charge. Tayenne is a seven year old Camargue mare who has spent her life so far in a herd and hasn't really seen much of the world. Easy victim for little miss bossy, really.....

Sheila's older mare, Lucie, has gone to the stallion and Tayenne has come to keep Fina company whilst she's away. Lucie is definitely in charge of Fina, so it will all change again when she comes back. And next year there will be a foalie for her to contend with!

We went for a nice walk, Ali rode Fina and we walked Tayenne the spook monster who did a lot of snorting at stuff, but is starting to get the idea that the whole world is not out to get her.

Great hacking round there.......

Pastures new.....

Almost two years ago, a yellow pony arrived with us, I wrote about it here. She was insecure, nervous and unpredictable and it quickly became evident that I needed to start again from scratch to gain her confidence.

Today, she had enough confidence in me to consent to leave the herd (wasn't over keen on leaving Sorcier, mind you), get into her least favourite trailer (mine) and travel to a new loan home. She is going to stay with my friend Sheila down in the Lot for a while to see if things work out there. Ali has sadly outgrown her to the point that she is finding it difficult to balance for jumping, at the rate she's growng I'll need something about 17hh soon!

Sheila however is the perfect size for her, knows her from coming up to ride with us and has the patience and skills to keep her on track, so I think  she will be happy there.

She certainly seemed happy earlier, when she met Sheila's pony Lucie for the first time there was none of the drama we had on her arrival with us!

I think they'll get on fine :-)

Hopefully I'll soon be reading about her progress on Sheila's  blog.

Snow? What snow?

So it's been snowing in a lot of places, apparently. People keep posting pics of themselves doing cool stuff in it, like this from some friends ooop north in Normandy:

But here? A light dusting of snow overnight on Thursday. Already melting by the morning. But elsewhere in the Dordogne apparently they had a good amount of the stuff, which meant that naturally all the school buses had to be cancelled in the whole department.....then we had lots of rain. Lots and lots of rain. Enough to flood the concrete in front of the stable. And the stable itself (luckily the hay in there is on pallets). Still, the ducks are happy at least.....

Anyway, last night we had a load more rain, followed by a bit more snow. But again, the roads were clear, so Ali and I decided to go up to the stables and get the horses out. The sun even came out :-)

Found a nice fallen tree in the woods for the girls (and dogs!)

By the time we got back, most of the snow had melted though and now we're back to mud, mud and more mud (and flooding). Ah well.......such is winter.

All change.....

Had a busy day today moving horses around. They all need to be off the land at Tanya's for a bit because due to the huge amount of rain we've had, it looks like this:

 

So most of them have gone up to the stables where the girls have their lessons, I think they're quite happy with the new digs!

But as I can barely afford for Fina to go into livery, big G has come home to be with Sky and Kinna. He immediately went for the hay and made it clear he is NOT SHARING! So I've had to do seperate nets for the girlies tonight....

 

G seems happy enough to be here, he was looking very serene in the sun earlier

 

Now we can start the ride and lead work with Kinna in earnest :-)

Pony jumping again

Went to another jumping competition last weekend and had an interersting day, as ever at these things. First problem was the guys marshalling the car park couldn't work out where to put the trailer as it was so long, we got the usual stares from the locals.......then we unloaded Chester, and attracted more stares and "what is that?" comments

Got him and Fina tacked up, took them to the collecting ring, sent Ali in on Fina who immediately started playing up as she didn't want to leave him, then didn't want to do any work and kept trying to head out the gate......this is what happens if she doesn't get her usual amount of work I suppose. Anyway, Ali got her back on track and concentrating on going over some jumps and once she'd let off a bit of steam she soon settled.

Meanwhile I narrowly avoided being mown down by a child on a small Shetland who had no control whatsoever when said Shetland decided to tank off out of the arena and scoff some grass......

Eventually, after the usual Obligatory French Faffing About Time (OFAT), as Mike calls it, it was Fina's turn to jump. I was wondering how she would react as it was in an indoor school for the first time, but she was fine about it and just ran out at one jump because, as Ali said herself, she got her line wrong.

 

Then Ali went and warmed Chester up. I stayed with Fina and thus didn't hear some of the comments the locals were making about Ches, according to Ali and Hollie it was along the lines of "look at the size of those legs, he'll never get off the ground" (if I had I would have had something to say to them, I can assure you). Anyway, Ches cleared the practise jumps beautifully so hopefully that shut them up!

We were all hoping he'd go clear in his round to prove them wrong but unfortunately as soon as he went in he was looking around a bit concerned and I guess he'd never been in an indoor school before. He had a refusal, then jumped it and carried on round but having a really good look at them all, and after a couple more runouts, got eliminated. But the ones he did jump, he didn't touch......

 

 

Still, we were pretty pleased with him first time out and I think a few jumping lessons up at the club and he'll be good to go for future comps.

We watched a load more classes, there was far too much in the way of strapping mouths shut/gags/martingales etc for my liking and a lot of uncomfortable looking horses, as well as far too many kids wearing spurs and clearly not knowing how to use them properly......

And the inevitable breaking loose of horses from trailers followed by running shouting owners. Every single time, that happens.......

Still up for running about...

First hack out since our holiday on Sunday and the boy was on form, we only did an average of 8km/h but I wasn't on my own. Had some great hooleys though, really pleased with Ali in this one as she managed to stop Fina chasing off after Sorcier for the first time :-)

Second bit of film, up the gallop track, G got a bit excited. There was a poor cyclist at the top of the hill who looked like he was sneaking into the vines to answer a call of nature and suddenly had 4 horses galloping towards him.....

Thenn I got out last night for a quick 7kms with Ali. Only one sticky moment, when some cattle were very interested in Choccy, and were running arouund near the fence Missy Hissy Yellow Pony threw her toys out of the pram big time, and it took ages to ger her past them.....

Then just past the cows there was a piece of electric tape across the path, not wishing to find out the hard way if it was live, we had to turn round and go back past them. Even with all that faffing about we still managed 8km/h.

Lovely evening for it......