Oh, Sky......

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......

 

Boot camp seems to be going well......

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 ;-)

Maybe our baby is finally growing up....?

Baby horse update

Took the girl out for a walk the other day, she was a star, soooo much easier than Sky......

Éowyn took some pics and a couple of them were even in focus

 Then Éowyn asked if she could ride her, so she had a quick sit on. No problem, Tari just turned and sniffed her feet, then went over to the verge and started eating.......

So here is a first clip for her training video diary, Éowyn is every bit as good at Shakycam as her sister......

I have recently been getting her used to having me walk alongside her as well as in front or at her head, in preparation for starting some in hand training. As you can see, she thinks this gives her free rein (pardon the pun) to dive for the grass on the verge!

Boot camp

Ali's been a bit frustrated recently at the lack of opportunity or venue to do any work with Sky, and Sky has been a contrary little git about going forwards out hacking, so I decided to try something different today. Found this place via a group on FB and it's only half an hour's hack from us, in fact we've ridden past the road down to it many a time, didn't know it was there.....

Annoyingly, as the crow flies, it's 5 minutes away, but someone very inconsiderately put the M5 between it and our yard....

Anyway, Sky was her predictable nappy self on the way there (I followed in the car) and got very excited when she saw another horse on its way back ahead of her, so by the time we arrived she was all hot and bothered. I had warned the instructor, Sarah, what she can be like......but she was cool and just said take her in the school and we'll see what happens.

Sky pranced off snorting and neighing but settled quite quickly - and as soon as she realised she was having to do some work, she resorted to trying to stop and nap to the gate, then to the barn at the far end where some other horses were......this is, according to Sarah, because her basic schooling isn't in place and she doesn't unquestioningly go off the rider's leg. So the rest of the session was spent concentrating on not letting her get away with any stopping and in the end she kinda got the message.

 

Sarah recommended we take a dressage whip out and use it to reinforce the leg aid if she doesn't listen. She also immediately asked why she wasn't ridden in a bit......

So am I being to "fluffy" with Sky? Should she have done more lunging as a youngster (another recommendation)? I don't know. What I DO know is that Ali really enjoyed the lesson, got a lot out of it and wants to go back next week, so that's what we'll do.

Your Horse Live

Now we're in the UK, many events we never used to be able to get to are now merely a wait in a motorway traffic queue away......yesterday we decided to make the trip up the M5 to Your Horse Live. Quite a good day out, but not the best event I've been to all year.....

Took us half an hour to get into the car park, which was a muddy field at 10 am and by the time we came to leave, they'd had to get some tractors out on standby to drag cars out, luckily we were very near the hard track so managed to get out unaided (my old car would have needed help from a tractor )

Once inside, I couldn't believe just how much shopping there was, more even than at Olympia.......We had a job fighting our way through the crowds oohing and aahing over the sparkly browbands and embroidered jackets to actually get to an arena. At one point we nearly walked into Charlotte Dujardin wearing a huge furry headband thing......

The smaller arena was good, you didn't have to queue for ages like for the main arena. We saw Jason Webb in action, I like him, have seen his bridleless riding vids online before. He did a demo on his horse Diesel and they clearly have a great relationship. He was bridleless, guiding him with his seat and a long whip for showing direction and he was refreshingly honest about this being a work in progress and what had worked well at home wasn't working so well in front of a crowd elsewhere (as the horse charged round the arena without listening to him at first) but he stuck with it and got there in the end.

Ali really liked him so went to get his autograph afterwards

We listened to a few people in the equine Learning Zone, there was a Q&A session with Carl Hester, Jason Webb, Paul Tapner & Ben Hobday...

Outside they had the Rescue Village, with all the charities bringing some inmates along, and Hovis, of Horse and Hound fame, was there, looking very fed up with being shut in a stable and kicking the door to bits....

Then we went to queue up for the main arena to watch Paul Tapner in action. He did a quick masterclass on riding cross country fences.....

But most importantly, we saw the guys from the Centre of Horseback Combat again, and I treated myself and Ali to an early Christmas present :-)

Don't know if we'll go to YHL again though, as I said, too much shopping and not enough horses for my liking........

Horse archery championships

Last weekend saw Ali and I climbing blearily into a car full of camping equipment at 6 am. After our nice welcome at the European archery competition a couple of weeks ago, we decided to go along to the British Horseback Archery Association's annual championships. A flurry of emails and phone calls during the week testifying to her ability to stay on a horse had secured Ali a place in the competition.

We had also arranged to pick up a total stranger and fellow HBA enthusiast from Bristol on the way. Susie turned out to be very nice and coincidentally to share some of our fluffier views on such things as bitting and shoeing horses, so the journey passed quickly....

On arrival at the Centre of Horseback Combat, it was raining, so we steeled ourselves to go and stand in a soggy field for the day. We could at least huddle damply under the judge's tent, unlike the people taking part, who got very, very wet.....

Still, by the time it got to Ali's first event, something called the Australian Triple, the rain stopped and the sun even came out, so she managed to stay relatively dry. She got handed her mount, one of only two who can deal with left-handed archers, a nice boy called Jupiter.....

This event turned out to be a lot like the club 2 competition in France, you can carry your arrows in the hand and start with one nocked on the string. She managed to get one in a target, probably should have saved the victory dance until after she'd finished the run though..... ;-) There were 3 targets per run, the first and last angled so the last one was a back shot, that'll need some practise!

Anyway, she actually came fourth, and was very happy to get a rosette :-)


The next event, for the more experienced archers, was something called the Mamluk, which involved doing a long shot, a forward shot,  a Jarmaki, which is a target flat on the ground, a back shot and an offside shot. Great one to photograph!

After that, it was back to the car to extract the aforementioned camping gear and set up camp. As the sun went down, so did the temperature, so we took the only prudent course of action and retired to the pub for a few fortifying pints and some nice hot grub.

The next day dawned chilly, with frost on the ground (and in Ali's hair!) but at least it wasn't raining. That day's event was the Korean competition which everyone did. The main problem here for Ali was that for 4 of the 6 runs you can't start with an arrow nocked, so there are many photos of her doing this....!

So the best we can say about the Korean event is that she got a rosette for taking part.... ;-)

A fun weekend, met some great new people, and a lot of them are Firefly fans as it turns out, so they can't be all bad.....looking forward to the next event. Need to get some serious practise beforehand though ;-)

Proper horse archers......

Went to watch the UK leg of the European Horse Archery Grand Prix series this weekend. First challenge was actually finding the venue, which was the Centre of Horseback Combat Had the postcode I'd found online for them been accurate, we might not have spent most of the morning driving around tiny country lanes looking for the place.....in the end we took the only sensible course of action and repaired to a pub with wifi for lunch, got the phone number from the website and phoned them.

Having finally arrived (turns out we'd driven past it twice) and trudged along the traditional muddy tracks, we were greeted by the people who run the place telling us to keep Choccy on the lead and away from their huge (and presumably quite grumpy) Dyrewolf like dog.......

So we briskly strolled over to where the action was taking place and some nice people immediately introduced themselves and started telling us what was going on and who was who.

There were 4 teams, GB, Poland, Poland and Finland, and one of the GB guys was on the most gorgeous Haffie, you sure knew when he was coming up the run....

That'll be Tari in a couple of years :-) Although probably with a significantly dirtier tail ;-)

Spent a while talking to one of the Swedish guys (who of course spoke perfect English) about the merits of the thumb draw versus the 3 finger draw, as you do, and the NO made herself useful bossing the British team members' two small sons around and occasionally "helping" to collect arrows......

Yesterday's comp was all about the Hungarian style of archery where you have the targets up high (like Club 1 in France), we were hoping to get back today for the Korean shooting (separate targets on the ground, like for Club 2 & 3) and something called the Mamluk, which apparently involves having to shoot at targets at all sorts of different angles, including on BOTH sides of you (more on that here) but ran out of time largely due to massive traffic queues on the M25......

After Saturday's comp, Team GB were just in the lead, but they had 4 team members and the Poles in second only 3, they are amazing archers!

Some great kit on display too, love this quiver.....

Wish Hemel Hempstead wasn't so bloody far away......

Loads more photos here