Sun came out today, went for a hack (I rode Sky!), then had a play in the new school that's just been built at our livery yard, such luxury!!
Tari wasn't sure about the step up into the school at first but soon got the hang of it.....
Ali's been riding her with both reins and neckstrap, she's getting the hang of it all now, even managed a bit of steering without her bridle
Obviously hard work though :wink: :lol:
She's done so well today, she's gradually getting the hang of steering etc, and she's interested in everything. We've been doing a little bit at a time and giving her plenty of thinking time, and she picks things up well, not as quickly as Kinna or Fina, but she gets there :-D Sky started out on full, tense alert (after all, we'd changed things!!) but once she'd got back to the school and got used to being in there, she settled enough to do some nice calm work.
The sand is really hard going at the moment as it'll need time to settle, so we'll be doing slow work for a while.....Interdressage Baroque test should be just the thing :-)
We've had a few months of not doing a lot with our horses, largely due to much running around helping people with horseback archery training and events (more on that here). But recently we've picked things up again, so here are a few photos.....
With Sky, we have gone right back to basics and just started doing ten minutes or so a day asking her to move around a bit, bending, backing up, with as little rein use as possible, to stop her bracing her neck. In fact, sometimes we dispense with a bridle all together.
Tari too has made some progress, especially with that scary plastic stuff.
And today, she went for her first hack with no lead rein, and was very good for our friend Nicola, with only a couple of discussions about stopping and trying to eat......
Some unusual nice weather last weekend saw us off out for a hack with all 3 horses. Decided to put Ali on Tari to see what would happen. Largely, nothing at all, as it turned out........
We went along the little back lane which meant the occasional need to trot on past a car or two, and there was no problem with that. The only real issue was the usual: Tari thought she was only there to eat as much of the grass verge as possible.......
Towards the end, we didn't even bother with the lead rein :-)
And here's a bit of vid, obviously we can totally ignore any attempt to steer if we think we can get over to the side for a munch ;-)
Had a little session today trying some of the stuff from the Honest Horsemanship clinic last week. Sky was trying to go off ahead of Ali when we fetched them from the field and was generally not taking much notice of her or me, so I started by showing Ali the disengaging the quarters, then I did the kicking backwards when she got too close. I didn't need to touch her at all, but it certainly got her attention, this is the pic Ali took just after!
Left Ali to do some stuff with her, and I moved on to G. Who decided he didn't want to do anything except eat and actually raised his back legs at me! So I swung his quarters around and got him moving how I wanted him to. Was very surprised to be honest, but maybe shouldn't be, my fault for neglecting his groundwork.....
Next we moved on to the mounted stuff, planking and all ;-)
(obviously I had to cheat and go up to the yard to use the mounting block )
Mr G was good as gold after his "telling off". Then we went for a hack (with saddles)
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" :-)
So yesterday we took Sky for her first jumping lesson with the instructor that coaches the team at Ali's school. The venue was 5 miles away from the yard so Ali rode her there and I followed in the car, like we used to do in France.
Was going to hack over with her but G is pretty slow these days, took him out with Tari on the lead on Friday and he ambled along taking about 20 minutes to do a mile.......so we decided to get Sky to do it alone. Good experience for her anyway.......
She did her usual trick of following the car, so they trotted most of the way. She was pretty good considering that's the furthest she's ever been on her own and she had to negotiate some main roads......
When we got there, the usual shiny clean booted & rugged horses were being unloaded from trailers. Sky neighed at them but was cool with it all. She went off into the arena and did what she was asked - to start with, at least. Trotting poles, yeah, fine:
Small cross poles, well OK, if I must:
But anything bigger? Erm, no, thanks!!
You want me to do what?!!
The other big shiny horses were by this time flying over some rather large jumps but Sky just decided she didn't want to play any more. So we left it at that. The instructor suggested we hire an arena and have a couple of private lessons to start with. Might look in to that, as there's a closer arena that's nicer to hack to. This one was right next to the M5 which makes it very noisy!
There are a couple of cross country training days coming up, which I reckon Sky would prefer, since she's always happy to gallop around and pop a log out hacking. The problem with poles is she knows she can knock them over. But of course the X country venue is too far away to hack to.
Sky hacked home in record time, took her under an hour to do the 5 miles. As it was all roadwork, that didn't involve any cantering. And her heart rate wasn't too high when she'd finished. So maybe she'd prefer to do endurance?
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....
Ooops, have been neglecting this blog a bit, partly due to Christmas etc but mainly due to not having internet at home - until today. So time for a bit of an update......
Well les Francais have been in the UK for 3 weeks now and they seem to be taking it all in their stride. They're not spending all their time on their own down the far end of the field any more, they sometimes actually graze alongside others in the herd and when we went out with G and Sky yesterday, Tari didn't even look up and styed with the others, although they called for her when they got back and she came running.
Had to laugh yesterday when the farmer who owns the place was shooting some clays, the main herd came barrelling up the field to investigate what the hell that noise was all about and our 3 didn't even stop grazing, so all that Chasse activity across the channel was good for something ;-)
Sky's leg seems to be well and truly on the mend, she was sound yesterday so Ali rode her out for the first time on English soil and she was pretty good, considering she hasn't hacked out for weeks. It was cold and frosty and bit slippy in places so she did have a couple of interesting moments but soon figured out that going on the verge was a good thing to do. We have to go past the 2 stallions up the road and I thought there might be some silliness, especially as the younger of the two was racing up and down the fence making a right racket, but she was just a bit looky then she carried on :thumbup:
We also had to go over the M5 bridge, Gandalf I think was expecting the river Dordogne to be under it rather than a load of noisy traffic (and it's SO noisy, you just don't realise when you're in a car!!) but again, apart from a few looks, they were fine with it. We had walked the girls over it a few days ago and Tari was so not bothered she was eating the grass by the edge of the barrier.....
Unfortunately you can't go for a quick ride on anything other than roads (curse those ramblers and their stiles) but so far the drivers seem far more considerate here than in France and there are lots of little roads to ride along. Our horses still seem to think they should be on the right though ;-) When I get a bit more time I can get up into Nibley and go through miles of bridlepaths in the woods where that monument is. There's also a disused quarry where the mountain bikers have made a load of obstacles which look pretty darn good for TREC practise to me!
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 :-)
So enough ranting and messing about with online awards (for now), and back to what the horses have been up to.....
Have done a couple of lungeing/long lining sessions with Sky. It was somewhat noticeable that Sky seems less than impressed with this idea, I'm pretty sure she thinks she should just be a field ornament. So she decided to try and bog off on the lunge, then did some nice airs above the ground when asked to canter. When these cunning plans failed to result in me going away and leaving her alone to eat grass, she grudgingly got with the programme and did some vaguely reasonable circles on both reins.
But, as with Chester, it is painfully obvious she finds going round in circles a bit dull. So do I, to be honest, so I put on some long reins and took her out for a spin. This resulted in very much more in the way of cooperation, in fact she didn't even look back at Tari, but strode out ahead. And didn't stop and try to eat, either, for a change!
Yes, I know, her tail is disgusting, because she doesn't lift it high enough and poos in it. I do occasionally try to wash it, honest!!
Then today I took the old boy out for a ride, for the first time in weeks due to him having had COPD. He hasn't been coughing for a while though so I thought I'd see what he was like out and about. Turns out he was absolutely fine, we only did about 5kms but a good half of that was at trot (his choice) and a couple of times he broke into a canter without too much distress in the breathing department.
We went over the river for the first time in months and discovered that the calcaire track has been resurfaced with new gravel which seems to meet with Gandalf's approval as he walked and trotted along it quite happily without constantly trying to get on to the verge. And Ches didn't even spook at the plastic-festooned tractor ;-)
