Why do people get so angry?

Over the years, this blog has had some fairly extreme reactions - often from people in the real world getting offended by what I have to say. Usually because of posts questioning the "traditional" way of doing something.

Someone once had a real go at me after reading this blog post . Apparently it was a personal attack on the way they kept their horses. And I am not alone, I have just today read this blog where a fellow advocate of keeping horses barefoot was accused of spreading "blasphemy". Any mention of things like riding barefoot or bitless usually gets people writing unpleasant comments on social media, and the name calling starts. "Fluffy bunny" is my favourite so far.....

But all we fluffy bunnies are doing is trying to make the lives of our horses as pleasant as we can. Trouble is, the horse kept in a lovely clean, dry stable most of his time, wearing a nice new rug, with regular schooling sessions with an expensive trainer and frequent excursions to a show in shiny new tack with his mane all pulled, whiskers trimmed and mouth strapped shut is having what his owner presumably thinks is the best life possible too. And these owners can't entertain for one second the idea that they might be wrong. That they might not understand their precious horse, they might be missing all the times he is trying to communicate with them, that they might be causing his lameness or colic or ulcers with unnecessary shoeing or limited turnout or unnatural feeding regimes.

And this I suppose is what makes them so cross. They need to feel that they are right in what they are doing, so we must be wrong. Maybe at the back of their mind there is a niggling doubt that there could be something in what we're saying but they'd rather not acknowledge it, so it's easier to get cross and have a go at someone than to question their own knowledge.

But getting people to question things is one of the reasons I started this blog. And among all the nasty comments and negative reactions, if there is just one person, somewhere, who reads it and starts thinking that maybe they could change some aspect of their horse's life to allow him time to be a horse just a little more, then it's worth it. So I shall continue......

Rock crunching

When we went out in the woods the other day we noticed some big piles of gravel had appeared. Presumably they're going to spread it on the paths to make them more vehicle-friendly in the winter. It's not little smooth, round gravel like you get in posh gardens, it's big uneven, lumpy shapes, calcaire they call it in France.

So naturally we decided to see what the horses would make of it. Going up and down slopes is good training for TREC and all that. Not to mention good practise for just riding out and about.

Well, they just walked up and down it, no problems. Sky might have wonky feet that don't look like a lot of people think they should, but she has no problem taking them and the rest of herself over this sort of terrain.

Who needs shoes anyway? :-)

Dressage with a difference

After all the negative publicity surrounding the European Championships in Aachen recently, it was nice to go somewhere at the weekend and see a nice harmonious dressage competition.

Concordia Equestrians is a new group set up to promote the horse's wellbeing above competitive needs. So at this dressage competition, only snaffle bridles are permitted. No tight nosebands are allowed, and no spurs. And bitless bridles are allowed :-)

It was a lovely afternoon, despite a terrible forecast the weather behaved and the sun came out. There was a real mix of competitors, from little ones on ponies to Lucinda McAlpine on home-bred Spanish/TB crosses......

 

Every competitor had a tack check before starting to ensure that everything fit properly and nothing was overtightened.

 There was a very relaxed atmosphere, no pressure, plenty of time for horses to get used to their surroundings, which included some inquisitive cattle!

We met some nice new people and we really wished we could have brought our horses along......but they are planning on starting up some online classes so hopefully we will be able to take part that way soon

Hoping there will be many more of these :-)

Full of the joys of spring.......

Very "interesting" walk out with Sky this morning, lots of silliness and spooking.......which is not like Little Miss Sensible at all!

We met Choccy's two greyhound mates again, she was not happy about them running round at all, them there were tractors in the vines and a MAN WITH A WHITE BUCKET!!!! Cue much snorting, jumping about and giraffing.....even after I went to talk to him (not that he was too keen on being approached by the lunatic on the other end of my leadrope.....)

She kept a very careful eye on the tractor putting in fenceposts too....eventually calmed down enough to stuff down some grass in that kind of "better eat quick cos I'll probably have to run away fom that in a second" kind of way......

Which is probably the problem, she doesn't get a lot of spring grass, but maybe it's enough to set her off. Either that or she's being a hormonal teenager at the moment.......

Still, we finished our little circuit, which involves roads, grass and lots of varied stony/gravelly/rocky bits, so all good for her feet, which are a lot less prone to chipping since the barefoot trimmer has been doing them.....

Busy day

The trimmer came for his second visit today. He says all of their feet have improved, Ches and Kinna's are particularly good, and an 8 week interval is fine for them all as they do so much exercise. People have tried to tell me that unshod horses can't do lots of roadwork as their feet will wear away, but Chester and Gandalf have shown otherwise!!! Sky's feet still have some flares but they are growing out, her feet look totally different since she's been having a barefoot trim rather than a farrier's pasture trim.....

 Ali got out of school an hour early so we took Gandalf and Sky for a walk. G can't be saddled at the moment because of his lump (which is getting smaller) so Ali hopped on bareback.

We went past the garden with the noisy Alsatian behind a plastic covered fence (it's the noise it makes jumping on the fence that bothers them, not the dog itself) and stopped to let them graze and get used to the wretched animal, as it's on one of my nice hack routes. Next thing I know, the dog's owner has come out and after calling it to totally ineffectually, had a go at us for winding his dog up!!! I got the chance to trot out some choice rude French words.........

Anyway, I achieved my objective, which is to get Sky not to jump when the dog jumps on the plastic. Mind you, the first time it did that, it made me jump too!!

After that we went to fetch Éowyn from school, horses totally unfazed by lots of screaming kids, not really a surprise considering they live with Éowyn really......

...and of course, she insisted on a lift home!

Barefoot trimmer

The trimmer came today to check out the troops, he says none of them really have any serious issues, they've all been tidied up, most of them were well behaved (apart from Sky). Took lots of pics.....

Fina

Sky, showing some flare (you shouldn't be able to see daylight between the rasp and the hoof!)

One trimmed, one not:

Gandalf, bit of flare....

...but generally pretty good for a horse that's been shod til 3 months ago

Here are some pics of Tanya's pony Polo, showing some serious flare:

He said Kinna has beautiful feet. She was interested in the anatomy lesson too.....

So which one is the good hoof and which one the bad?

Oh, and the best thing for their feet is a gravelled area in the paddock so it looks like I am going to have to dig out all the mud in front of the stable and replace it with gravel......that'll keep me busy!!!

Barefoot boy.....

When we got back from our hack the other day, one of Gandalf's shoes was hanging off, he'd pretty much removed it all by himself with one of his hinds......so as Tess's farrier was coming that evening but didn't haave time to re shoe him, I asked him to take them both off.

Today we went for a little hack, here's the map. He was fine on the grass and in the stubble field, a little bit footy on the road and absolutely hated the gravel. Mind you, he hated gravel when he had the shoes on, too......

Took some pics of his feet for reference

Near fore:

off fore:

We'll just have to see how he gets on. Going to research some hoof boots now.