An interesting afternoon.....

Today I went to Ali's pony club where my friend Tanya keeps her horse. They had an "éthologue" visiting and she'd booked a session to try and improve her confidence and her seat after a recent fall. Being a nosy sort of person, I tagged along. Just as well as it happens because he couldn't speak great English so I had to translate.......

A lot of what he was saying we'd done with Adam already in our passenger lessons, he didn't go into the whole "where are their feet exactly" thing but he did ask her to forget about using her legs and turn her whole upper body where she wants the horse to go, "imagine you've got an extra set of eyes on your chest and they need to face the same way as the eyes on your head" he said. "point your tits to where you're going" was how I translated that......

And above all, be supple, don't tense up and breathe in time with the horse's movement. "Ride like Lucky Luke" he said......it doesn't matter what you look like, it's how it feels to the horse......

Pretty much the first time I've seen a Frenchman riding without hauling the horse around (although he rides with more contact than me, ie any at all) and kicking it to bits, too........He's called Olivier Cayre, his site is here

Could definitely see a difference in Tanya's riding too, she was a lot less stiff towards the end of the session. Would be interested in seeing how he works with horses on the ground.

Good things come to those who wait......

My little Silky hen has been brooding eggs for several weeks and finally her patience has been rewarded, sadly only one egg has hatched, the others were from the bigger chickens and as our cockerel is a dwarf breed, he can't get up on top of them to do the deed!!

Now she has left the other eggs and gone to sit on a bunch of duck eggs in the corner of the stable. Maybe she'll have more luck with those as our drake, Confit, has been rogering the ducks enthusiastically for weeks!

A fun afternoon.....

Got invited to take part in a car rally today.Not the "how fast can you drive round a course" sort, but a kind of treasure hunt in the car. We blagged a lift with Guy & Sarah, knew we'd win because Guy is outrageously competitive........and we did!!

Saw some nice Appaloosas en route, and went down lots of little roads we'd never seen before, lots of nice countryside (once we'd worked out that EtV meant "enjoy the view" on the instructions and wasn't some obscure cryptic clue *rolls eyes*). Éowyn was only sick the once.......

Apparently as the winners we now have to write the next one......

Naughty baby girls......

We had to go and fetch the babies home from Bonneville today because they had escaped from the big field up there, they can just step through thte tapes! We will have to redo the fences up there once the commune have finished digging up half the field to lay pipes.......

So I wrestled with 2 kids, 2 horses and a dog for several kilometres, some of it in the rain.Even acquired a 3rd child for the last bit! All the girls were very good, except Éowyn who was very whingey, apart from when she got to splash in puddles. Still, all good character building stuff........

Kitten update

The kitties are three weeks old now and are finally starting to look like cats! They're wobbling about on their little legs and attempting to escape from the basket. Lali is very patient at picking them up and putting them back in........

Adam's weekend, day 3

This morning started off with Marianne doing some work on leading a horse safely. After that, Adam did a bit with the babies, just getting them used to seeing us from all angles, not asking them to do anything in particular but just putting himself in position around them as they moved about. Then we did more direction from the ground with Gandalf and Maverick, getting them to back up, being aware of where they need to put their feet when they make certain moves, even doing a little obstacle course!

Then after lunch was connecting the groundwork to the ridden stuff. First of all we had a "passenger lesson", we sat on the horses and just felt how they moved around, identified when a particular leg left the ground. Adam moved them from the ground, it was very strange not knowing where your horse was going to go or when it was going to go up a gear! After that, we got reins on the headcollars and got into directing them just by taking the rein off the neck to turn, timing it so we ask for the turn as the feet are in the right place to be able to do it.

Adam asked me to direct Gandalf away from the gate (and Mav on the other side of it) and instead take him down to the opposite end of the field. This proved to be extremely difficult because he wanted to stay with Mav. I couldn't pull him around to direct him, I had to get him going then try to direct him by taking the rein off his neck, if he tried to circle back I had to keep him in the circle til he was facing away again, but he kept coming back to the gate and stopping, it took me about 20 minutes to finally get him to the end of the field. If I'd had his bridle on I could have simply pulled the reins and insisted. Makes you think........

Adam's weekend, day 2

So today we started with a lesson on how to hold the ropes Adam uses as it's not as easy as he makes it look! Simple little things like when you coil it up, twist it slightly so the loops don't twist themselves into funny shapes......

He uses the long ropes because you need to give your horse plenty of space. A lot of horses are lead around on short lead ropes with people standing at their head or shoulder and they can't turn their head to check stuff out, so they end up moving their feet instead and that's when we get stood on. We use 12 foot ropes with our horses, but Adam's are 24 foot so that takes a bit of getting used to!

But before working them on a line, we learnt how to direct them without one. Adam used the same signals as another horse would to move them around. You have to look where you DON'T want the horse to go, so to move them off, you look about 2 feet behind them and bring your energy level up. If you want a horse to go forward, you need to be behind his shoulder, if you want to stop him, you need to be in front of his shoulder. You look in front of his head to stop him. The angle between you and the horse is very important. All this takes a lot of getting used to, he had to help us with the positioning.........

Then we did more of the same but with the lines, directing the horse to go, stop, left and right just using our position, with no pulling on the rope at all.

This is the start of the foundation of his work, getting the horse to trust you to be able to set his direction and support him in where he goes. Horses are always looking for understanding, which they know they can get from other horses  but not usually from us!

What was very important too is not to direct any energy at the horse, not to chase at them because that just means "go away" and then you've lost them.

We also spent a lot of time looking at the way a horse moves, because if you are aware of which leg he hasn't got his weight on, asking him to turn so he uses that leg rather than trying to pull him the wrong way makes total sense. A lot of horses resist being pulled in a certain direction because they physically can't go that way due to the way they're standing.