Sky was a total star today. Sarah at Team Green was taking one of hers to a local cross country course and she offered to take Sky along for a play too. She had to go in the big lorry and once she'd figured out where to put her feet she loaded OK, between Twinkle, Sarah's home-bred eventer, and Destiny, her former problem horse turned schoolmistress. Yes, OK, she looked very scruffy and small compared to them and the other horses there, but once she got going, she really went for it.
Twinkle gave her a lead, after an impressive bucking session straight off the lorry, which is apparently entirely normal as she gets very impatient to be off, and Sky barrelled along after her like she'd done it before!
She wasn't too keen on the white house, but jumped it after Twinkle proved it wouldn't eat horses, and had no problem at all with the corn cob or the carrot.....
She went for a splash in the water and up and down the bank, and over some solid-looking fences like a proper XC pony
At the end, we sent them off over a couple of jumps without Twinkle, she was less keen on this, but did it eventually
So yesterday it was cross country day, Carole is in the process of building a course so we had a few fences to play with. Again, Nahiade was a star and really seemed to enjoy doing something other than going round in circles in the sand school.
As she still hasn't got a bitless bridle for her, we tried Gandalf's new Micklem and she really seemed to appreciate it, maybe it was the bridle, maybe the Myler comfort snaffle, maybe the two, and maybe Ali's soft hands but there was far less head-in-the-air-taking-off......
She was the only one who was prepared to go in the water at first, Ali soon had her cantering through it, but all the others went in eventually, some more readily than others!
Caitlin was riding Sun, a big trotter who is very enthusiastic but is a big baby about things sometimes. Think he enjoyed the jumping too though :-)
Very pleasant day out, although I ended up doing 6kms on foot following them around the course, so no need to do any cycling for the 5x50! Chox enjoyed it too, I reckon......
Little bit of video here:
Really fancy a go at some XC myself now, wonder if Gandalf would mind?
The Olympic Equestrian events have finished and we have had some great viewing and the sport has reached a wide audience. But sometimes, for me, that viewing had been uncomfortable, some dreadful images are doing the rounds on the internet like this
I still can't believe this woman was rewarded for riding her horse like this with a silver medal.....but the marvellously relaxed combination of Carl Hester and Uthopia were denied a medal. The chairman of the judging panel, Stephen Clarke, was on BBC Breakfast this morning and he actually said that Parzival, the horse pictured above, was crossing his jaw and leaning on his rider's hands. So why such a hight mark then???
The FEI's Facebook page is still being deluged with images like this, they are not only deleting them but denying the posters access to the page, so much for freedom of expression!!
The showjumping was an undeniably exciting competition to watch, but why do a lot of the riders feel it necessary to shove a load of metalwork in the horse's mouth and strap its head down and its mouth shut? Why do they need to jab them in the mouth so much?
And the cross country took a heavy toll with 15 eliminations due to falls. I cannot imagine ever asking one of my horses to jump down something like this
But it is great viewing, and I have watched as much as possible, and winced at the pulling on horse's mouths, but I decided a long time ago that jumping and cross country and anything more difficult than a walk trot dressage test just isn't for me.....
