Who needs tack, anyway......?

Went down to do the horses the other day and as we had a bit of time, we decided to get on and ride even though we didn't have our tack with us (or a decent camera either, just the ancient iPhone someone has lent me since mine no longer works - getting them really clean on a 40 degree wash cycle isn't good for them, apparently- so apologies for the state of the pictures)

I rode Gandalf I the rope headcollar and practised some of the moves we learned at Sheila's the other week.

He was a bit hesitant at first, probably thinking "what are you doing this time, woman?" but he was very easy to guide and we did some lateral work at walk and trot.

Nice to know the controls still work without all our usual equipment! But I think ditching the saddle long term is not an option, makes my legs hurt!

Ali had a little go on Sky too, she's much better at riding without a saddle than I am....

But I don't think either of us is ready for this yet.....!!

Darth Vaders, Princess Leias, Star Fleet Command, a Wookie or two, some unlikely looking aliens.......and a bloke in fishnet tights.

Yes, it's that time of the year again, our annual pilgrimage to the Médoc Marathon, the biggest excuse to dress up, go running and drink wine on the French marathon calendar.

So I got dragged round the shops on Friday by my very own MAMIL to purchase some pipe insulation, dowelling, silver paint, cotton wool, an Alice band and a plastic wineglass so he could have a bit of a Blue Peter moment with his fancy dress idea.

This year's marathon theme was science fiction. We do have a fair few costumes already, being the sort of geeks who have been known to frequent sci fi conventions in the past, but none of them would be exactly comfortable for running 42kms in, and having learned his lesson from last year's idiotic plan of running in plate armour, he chose a wiser course this year and made this:

So off he trotted, amidst the host of Star Wars/Trek characters, bizarre aliens, Supermen, Pirates (?), the odd flying saucer and even a Tardis, to start the race.

We watched the whole marathon go past the start and got pics of some great/bizarre/downright weird costumes, like this:

..and this:

and. erm this:

...because every marathon I've ever been to has always had at least one Frenchman in fishnet tights running (I can't imagine how bad the chafing must be!!) usually sporting a pair of comedy breasts and grinning inanely. This year I even saw a Princess Leia with comedy breasts but sadly failed to get a decent photo. And Mike was gutted not to see any women dressed as slave girl Leia from Return of the Jedi, although there were a host of men in drag doing it :-/

I think this guy took Mike's "most uncomfortable costume to run in" prize:

I bet he was glad it wasn't as warm as last year!! And here are pics some of the more bizarre offerings on view:

 Captain America in drag?

 Some of him at least has been assimilated by the borg.....

 

 ummmm.....

Nice touch with the underpants here:

 

Not sure about these guys, Space Rats from Blake's 7, perhaps? ;-)

Leia's really let herself go these days...

Star Fleet officers like to wear drag too.....

 

During the race, we went off and had some lunch, but decided to pass on the 16€ menu:

But I did try some of the beer!

And the old boy managed to run the marathon in about 5 and a half hours which isn't bad for him. Although we missed him at the finish due to the SNO seriously living up to her nickname and annoying not only her sister but innocent bystanders so I had to take her away and find a playground to occupy her.........

Oh and whilst we were away for the weekend, guess what? Tari escaped again. How does she know....???

Houston, we have a problem......

So last week, the mother-in-law took the girls away on holiday and we had FOUR WHOLE DAYS without them. Heady with our new found freedom, we decided to head off for a couple of days camping on the Ile d'Oléron. First time we'd been away without the kids for a very long time. A couple of days to relax and unwind and do whatever the hell we wanted. What could be better?

But guess what? On the first day I get a phone call - one of the horses decided to escape from the field......

So I called Tanya who was on duty whilst I was away, thinking that dear old Gandalf had done his trick of getting to the other side of a fence leaving it intact, which he's done a couple of times if the electricity isn't working too well, with all the dry hot weather we've had, the earth spike probably needed watering....but no, I did him a disservice, it was Tari who was out, having left lots of tape trailing.

Who, me?

So she was duly recaptured and the horses were shut in the half of the field fenced with proper wooden posts rather than plastic ones, and given hay to lessen the temptation of that greener grass on the other side.

When I got back I went to check on them and all was well. However , the next morning, Mademoiselle had done her trick again and was out sampling the new grass alongside the fence. Sky and Gandalf were very good and stayed on the right side of the fence, watching her. I put her back in the field and went off round the fence to check it all again. At the bottom of the field it isn't fenced due to the abundance of brambles in front of a  wide stream with steep banks. Deterrent enough, I thought. But as I walked along to make sure no enterprising wildlife had forced its way through, dear Tari decides to follow me and investigate a slight gap herself, forces her way through the brambles with seemingly no ill effects and goes down the steep bank of the stream. Which, due to all the hot dry weather we've been having, is no longer a stream but a series of green, mosquito breeding puddles interspersed with black sticky mud.

Which it turns out is no deterrent at all to the curiosity of a baby horse......

So I followed her down into the sticky mud, lost a shoe on the way, got bitten by the multitude of mozzies, swore a lot and by the time I'd caught up with her, she'd decided that it wasn't so interesting down there, turned round and cantered back up into the field!

So after some more colourful language I retraced my steps, fetched some white tape and set about closing off the gap in the brambles and incidentally acquiring a series of holes in my clothing and adding lots of scratches to my collection of mozzie bites.

Ah, the joys of horse ownership...............

Skysie goes to school.......

This week there was a stage up at the stables which Ali wanted to do. As Polo was going up there anyway, we blagged a lift in the trailer for Sky to see how she'd get on in a new environment.

Rather well, as it turns out :-)

Here's what she did.....

That last one is the jeu d'éperviers, a bit like British Bulldog on horseback. She also did a bit of dressage, a bit of TREC, jumped the odd pole, went for a gallop, wasn't too happy about being shut in a box to be saddled and fell in love with Carole's Arab, Idaa.......and all without a bit.

She's come home now for a rest. Love her......

Seraphina and some thoughts.......

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 :-)

More about that on Sheila's blog here

A post actually about my horses......with a teeny tiny rant

The girls were full of beans this morning, Ali rode Sky in the "school" (or front section of the field as it's more accurately known) intending to try a run though of a dressage test (the Club 3 one she might do at next month's comp although it won't be on Sky as it has to be in sitting trot - why, FFE? Why?  ) just doing it all at the walk to practise bending and circles.

But Sky was a bit full of beans and shot off at the slightest touch of her leg so we let her get it out of her system and Tari joined in too and surprised me with some moves, bit of extended trot and even a flying change at one point chasing the dog!

After a while we got her to concentrate a bit more, with Tari still in tow for most of it....!

Must print off some arena letters though, I can't get my head round the 60 x 20 ones at all, why can't they do simple tests here with just the 40 x 20 ones I can remember? All King Edward's Horses Can Make Big Fences, easy. But fitting in those extra S, V, P, and the other one I can't even remember off the top of my head? Impossible! Who came up with such a random system of letters anyway? A quick Google reveals that no one really knows for sure, although according to this blog post we can probably blame the Germans.

I mean, look at this:

Horrible. Oh, the extra letter is R that I couldn't remember, which means I suppose you could remember those as RSVP but that still means you have two sets of acronyms/mnemonics or whatever. And as for the middle letters, well, I can usually remember where x is and that's about all......

Oops, this appears to have turned into another little rant. Hey ho......

Reckon this would be more like it though ;-)

Beasts of burden

So I have just finished reading Joe Camp's book, Soul of a Horse. A very interesting read, all about how Joe and his wife first started sharing their life with some horses. This bit really made me think:

"Dr Matt was right when he said that until recently horses were pretty much just beasts of burden. But I believe many of them still are. Just different burdens. Instead of pulling a plow or wagon, they're jumping fences. Or racing. Or doing heavy-handed dressage ballets."

(He's American, so we'll forgive him for not being able to spell plough.)

Last year I remember seeing this promotional video for the Hickstead jumping on Sky. Lots of slow motion footage of the jumping. And lots of big bits, tight reins, heavy studs and leatherwork. Anybody else think these horses do not look happy?

Some of the dressage horses I saw at London 2012 certainly didn't either.

As for racing, starting a ridden career at two is, in my humble opinion, not good for any horse. I also don't like the way most racehorses are kept, little turnout, lots of concentrated feed, rugs, shoes, all the things we do to horses for our convenience, these things certainly aren't convenient for them. A huge percentage of them develop ulcers from the stress of their unnatural lifestyle, hardly surprising is it?

So why does all this happen? Same reason we've been using the horse as a beast of burden for thousands of years, because it suits us and because it makes us money.

But this abuse of the horse's trusting, compliant nature doesn't just go on at the high end of competition. Every time I go to a show here I see unhappy horses and heavy-handed riders. Kids wearing spurs. Ponies in gag bits. Tight nosebands. The infernal de Gogue. Horses getting hit because they didn't understand what the rider wanted of them. The list goes on.......

You don't have to take my word for it. Here are some pics I have taken in the last year or so - and these are just some of people I don't know, plenty of others I could include but this blog gets me into enough trouble as it is ;-)

The human race doesn't have much to be proud of really, does it?