OK, well I spoke too soon about the boot camp. After a couple of weeks off due to a frozen sand school and some snow, Sky went back for a lesson and was a total git.
She didn't want to go and do some work as there were some interesting looking geldings on the bottom yard (yes, she's coming into season) and she wanted to go and talk to them.
She remembered her incredible stop and refuse to go forward technique that we thought she'd given up.
Ali got a bit of a workout, and Sky eventually got the message when Sarah reached for the lunge whip. So in the end, she did do some work. Having expended far more energy attempting to avoid doing any work than she would have needed to simply do as she as asked. Ho hum......
Sky has been going for her lessons as regularly as possible (when I've not been ill, Ali hasn't ben ill, or it hasn't been snowing) and she's been making good progress. I took the camera along the other day, as the sun was out and most of the mud was scraped off, and watched a bit of the lesson. She seems to be a lot happier in the school, the napping has disappeared and the only problem now is her lack of fitness, she was tired by the end....
Some pictures:
Canter transitions on the right rein are still a problem, Ali was having to really concentrate ;-)
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?
Stayed to watch the SNO's lesson this week as she was feeling hard done by. Usually I drop her off and take Ali to the other stables and stay and watch Ali, since it's a 25km round trip to go from one place to the other. But this week I organised it so Ali had her lesson on another day so we could take some pics of Little Miss Showoff......
She really enjoyed her lesson
...indulged in some unauthorised overtaking.....
...and managed not to fall off at canter (love the concentration on her face!)
I suspect the poor ponies enjoyed it rather less, there was much kicking and pulling going on and some of the kids had even been armed with crops. Had to resist the urge to drag some of the little beasts off the ponies' backs and give them a stern talking to. Which is why I prefer not to watch really. But it's the least worst stables round here (where Ali goes they don't take beginners) and her friends from school go, so she is happy.
Will just have to explain to her that if she kicks one of mine like they kick those ponies, she won't stop til the next county......!
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 :-)
A few more pics from the jumping on Sunday from the aforementioned posh camera, love this one of Fina in the air, shame about the poles in the way!
Then there's this one of Elodie jmping without stirrups after Peter put in a stop, well done that girl!
And I loved this spotty horse, jumped nicely and went clear
And here's Ali getting her prize
and Polo sampling some wine!
A couple more pics from today, from Éowyn's lesson at Louise's, they went for a hack and she was delighted with the new pony, Poppy, just the right size for her........ really should have kept Flecha, shouldn't I?
Continuing the quest to find a decent place for the girls to have lessons here that is less than an hour's drive away, we tried a new riding school today, run by an English friend of a friend.
Very small, only 10 or so horses, no sand school, nothing clever, but run by a BHSAI called Louise who is very nice, teaches well and has endless patience for the SNO "Can I trot now, can I, can I?"
Ali rode a nice big horse called, erm, Angey (?), bit bigger than she's used to!
But she enjoyed her lesson on him
Then it was Éowyn's turn riding Mickey. Right from the start she kept saying " Can I trot now?". Louise was very patient with her.....but eventually she did get to trot and she laughed a lot.....
So I have signed them up for a term's lessons, very reasonable prices too, their website is here.
Took Ali up for her first session of the year at Beaumont today, very chilly!! Didn't hang around long at the stables, took the SNO and dog for a walk to warm up......
By the time we got back, the faffing to get the horses ready and out had just about finished....
...so we watched the lesson for a bit, but didn't get too close to the rail as the wet sand and mud was flying everywhere!!!
Then we headed off for lunch and when we came back to pick Ali up, Isabelle said she should be OK to do some jumping competitions this year. One very happy daughter......
Had a brilliant afternoon yesterday at the Western Horse Farm. Jo took Socianda
and I rode one of their horses, a snowflake Appaloosa called Flashy. It was the
first time I'd ridden a properly Western trained horse and he was fantastic.
They are trained to voice commands, neck reining and shifts in bodyweight so are
incredibly light to ride. If I inadvertently put a slight contact on the bit, he
started going backwards! He was being a bit lazy at first so Frédérick, the
instructor, gave me his spurs, I have never , ever worn spurs of any sort
before, and these were huge!!!
As soon as he felt the slightest touch (I was worried about hurting him!) off he
went, so I didn't really need to use them......All you do for "go" is click your
tongue, for canter you make a kissing noise, the first time, he shot off and
took me by surprise!
We did a bit of "barrel racing" round cones and
Flashy knows his job so well that I didn't have to tell him what to do, as soon
as he saw them he came out of the corner running, and did the most incredibly
tight turns....
Excellent fun, loads more pics here and a video here (thanks to Stewart)
As it was a Bank Holiday here today, I took the girls up to the carriere (well OK, school marked out in a field) with the pones. And ended up doing a bit of lesson for them.....
We did a warm up at the walk, going over some of our Trec training course which is still there, then did some riding apart and doing things at opposite ends of the school, getting them to keep the same distance apart, not easy as Ches kept slowing down to wait for Fina and she kept speeding up to get to him!! The girls got them sorted in the end though.
Then we had the inevitable question "Can we do a jump?". Well we did it progressively, walked over, trotted over, and Ches was a total star and did the jump from canter a few times! Didn't push Fina to do it as I don't think she's done any jumping yet. Here's an edited video of the lesson.
Hollie did excellently well, even when Ches did his party piece at the canter......!
Had a great morning today up at the Centre Equestre in Beaumont (where we did the Trec last year), we hitched a ride to Tess and Caitlin's driving lesson, and Ali had a go too.
We harnessed up the ponies and set off in convoy......to the local Intermarché car park! There's a nice empty bit at the far end where Isabelle set up some cones and soon had eveyone weaving round them......
Can you believe this gorgeous pony was sent for slaughter, but Isabelle has contacts with the local horse butchers and they asked her if she'd take it as it was too nice to go for meat!?
A great experience, will definitely be going back for more lessons, Ali is doing a competition next weekend being "groom" for Caitlin!!
