Went along to watch some more people running about brandishing weapons on horseback yesterday. For a change the weapons in question were not bows. One of my horseback archery mates also does tentpegging and was going to a local competition so we went along to watch.
Was supposed to start at 10 but as we arrived at 10.30 there was no action in progress, just a lot of people slowly getting their act together after what must have been a bit of a party last night. Quite sorry we missed that......
Eventually (after some grumbling from the judges who were getting cold standing around waiting) people started arriving on horseback along with some fairly dangerous-looking weaponry......
...and, um, wearing some not-so-dangerous-looking onesies!
Finally the comp got going and it was fast and furious stuff, lots of over-excited horses galloping flat out whilst their riders tried to hit a small white bit of wood with a sword or lance........
Looks like a lot of fun! And as we all know, Sky is very good at galloping flat out.........in fact she'd have fitted right in! Something to add to the bucket list.....
Took Gandalf and Tari out for a hack today. So far, Tari has been very reasonable on the lead rope, following along happily, not really worrying about anything and only occasionally trying for a sneaky mouthful of grass.....but today, things changed. She discovered the Kinna manoeuvre.....
As we were happily trotting along, she stopped dead. I managed to get G to stop before the rope ran out, he's kind of used to it now (largely thanks to Kinna) and as soon as he feels me lean back, he slows down. I thought Tari might be having a poo, but no, she was just stopped, looking at me mutinously.
OK, I thought, we'll carry on, which she did, reluctantly. All went well until we were nearly home, when she did it again, right next to the verge of lush green grass......this time G was not so keen to stop, being fixed on getting home but I just about managed it without having to drop Tari's rope by doing a pretty good impression of Elastigirl from The Incredibles.....a passing motorist slowed right down in alarm (or maybe he was hoping to see me dragged out of the saddle) but I managed to get my ropes sorted and reel the little git back in.
She didn't actually get to scoff any grass (unlike Kinna the first time she tried it, as I had to drop the rope that time!) so maybe she'll get the idea that it doesn't work....or maybe next time out I'll get my arms lengthened again, we'll see. Probably doesn't help that she is having to be in the yard on hay only with Gandalf whose digestive system hasn't coped at all well with the abundant grass during my absence this summer. They would both far prefer to be out with the herd, but they won't be until the boy's gut is working properly again - and they will both have to be muzzled the whole time until the grass stops growing.
As for Sky, well before Ali could do anything with her yesterday, she had to let of a bit of steam!!
After that, she did start paying attention and we practised some cantering with the bow, no bogging off in alarm, she even got the hang of stopping just with a voice command at the end of each "run" :-)
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....
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.
Well the girlies sure were full of beans today.......
Got Sky out for a
bit of long lining and lunge work, she wasn't really paying attention, mainly
becasue it was the first time she'd been up to the carriere in my friend
Marianne's field and there were lots of potentially scary things to check out.
We just walked about at first, until she'd stopped snorting at everything, then
I asked for a bit of trot. That didn't go so well.........
So I took her to the round pen so she could let off steam instead......
Got some nice pics at least today, no real work done though.......
Then when I took her back down to Kinns in the field, they had a fine old time
Meanwhile, the sensible older horse (!) was doing some work too, Ali wanted to work on her turns and transitions for jumping. Fina tends to rush
a lot and sometimes has missed a jump because of her speed.........
So we
practised trotting and cantering over poles on the ground in a serpentine and
did a few other exercises like that from one of Ali's horse magazines, then we
practised transitions, got a bit of vid of that
After that, Mike turned up and ran home with Ali and Fina so she's here ready
for another CSO tomorrow. She was a bit anxious about being on her own, but is
much happier when there's someone on the ground with her. Hopefully we can get
another clear round tomorrow.......and there's no rain forecast for once!
Got a couple of nice pics of Fina too.....
.....and so she's not left out, here's one of Kinns :-)
As the weather is still ridiculously good, I have managed to go riding every day
for a week, which is a bit of a first for me!!
Today Gandalf and I went
out with Gary and Soso. We had a bit of a hooley, lots of nice
places to canter in the vines, Gandalf at one point was flat out galloping to
stop Soso overtaking him, Soso just cruised past at a canter.......poor G just
can't do the speed!!
He did jump a ditch that Soso refused to go over
though
When we got back we couldn't
resist going over the log that's still there from the trec course
either.....
The boys had energy to spare this morning, I put them in the small paddock to keep the grass down and off they went, haring round and being silly!
Choccy thought all this was great fun, here's a little video
We went for a hack this afternoon and every time we even thought about haing a little canter they got very excited, Maverick kept bucking, even Gandalf put in a little one! Think they need more exercise........
We are organising a charity calendar this year featuring some fancy dress photos of our horses and today we did a photoshoot. So here's Gandalf the Grey as a medieval destrier:
and Maverick as a lady's palfrey:
We had lots of fun galloping up and down the field, Mike took tons of photos and we gave the locals something to stare at......
