Back to France

So, Easter holidays are here and we've just been back to la maison en France for a week. Not exactly a holiday, mind you. Spent most of the week running around catching up with people. And drinking wine. Quite a lot of wine, as you do.......

Had lined up some riding lessons for Ali back at the club in Porte Ste Foy. Of course she wanted to ride Kinna. Pretty much as soon as we arrived, Carole was phoning to see if we wanted to come and see the horses getting fitted for their new hoof boots before their endurance comp at the weekend. So we went up there and got to catch up with Howard as he told me all about these new boots, Floating Boots, that he gets from Spain.

Like the look of them, even the sole is flexible......

Then it was down to see Tess and her horses who are in a new home and seem very happy and relaxed there. The yard owner has a Mérens mare who is fabulous, the SNO certainly thought so!

Back up to the stables for Ali to ride Kinna - and the little darling did her Tigger impression specially for us ;-)

Got actual sunburn up there standing by the school, having arrived looking like a pale English person. And that was just day 1......

Ali had another lesson on the Saturday on the lovely Nanou, who showed some really nice moments during the flatwork lesson

But the highlight of the week was going to Kinna's first endurance competition. After the usual crack of dawn start and endless drive, we arrived, unloaded, and she was like an overexcited kid, those funny-coloured ears were flicking at everything.....

She didn't want to stand still, pulled away from the trailer, stuck her head in the locker to get at the hay in there, reminded me of the SNO when she's on a mission to get into trouble......when we went for the vet check, she couldn't keep her feet still and even tried to eat the pot plant I thought all this excitement would mean a high heart rate......but no, it was only 28 bpm!!

Her winter coat is coming out in handfuls and where her skin fell off last year there's nothing left, she looks like a bit of a welfare case! They'll have to put suncream on her! But she is on good form, once she was saddled and wearing her new floating boots, she was impatient to be off.

John was intending to keep her at the back, but by the time they came back, she was out in front.....

.....and looking like she could go round again!

Then there was an argument about having water poured over her, she didn't seem to think that was necessary, although it was pretty hot by then (and I was well on the way to getting sunburned again) and more fidgeting and trying to go off and visit other horses or otherwise trying to get John's attention whilst he was trying to get his other horse ready for the 20k ride. Kinns seems to like him, she follows him about. The second vet check gave a heart rate of 48, not so good, but still not bad for a first time out. She came joint 7th with Carole and Valerie's horses both of whom have done this before a fair bit.

So a good day out, the two girls from Carole's on their ponies did very well for a first go, one of them came first as her pony had a returning heartbeat of 32. I miss those guys, can't wait to get back out there this summer.....

Sky (almost) goes jumping.....

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?

 

On the Trail of Genghis Khan

No, not me. I do fancy doing a long ride one day, but not this long! I am currently reading the above titled book by a chap called Tim Cope who rode 10,000kms (!) across the Eurasian steppe from Mongolia to Hungary. Took him over 3 years......

Makes my ambition to ride from our UK house to our French house one day seem somewhat tame.....

Anyway, this is an interesting read. For a start, Mr Cope couldn't actually ride a horse when he started. Pretty much straight away, his horses got nicked (not for the last time, as it turned out). He acquired a dog, and what sounds like a serious vodka addiction along the way. And learned lots of interesting stuff.

Here are some excerpts that I particularly like.....

"When Dashnyam climbed back onto his horse, I watched him closely. Observing a custom universal among horsemen the world over, he carefully approached his black gelding from the left-hand side and eased into the saddle. Horsemen in the Western world believe this tradition originates from a time when cavalrymen carried swords on their right leg. On the steppe, however, among the descendants of those who introduced horses and cavalry warfare to the West, there is a belief about this custom that is probably older than both the Iron Age and Bronze Age. In a culture where the sun has always been worshipped and gers still strictly face south toward the life-giving orb, the word for "left" in Mongolian, baruun, is the same as the term for "east". To approach a ger from the east or mount a horse from the left is to approach in the same direction as the sun passes through the sky. To approach from the right and therefore the west is the sign of an enemy and can only invite trouble."

"Mongolians believe the spirit of a horse can live on in its hair, even long after death, and in the past, nomad warriors collected the hair from their best stallions to weave into a sulde or "spirit banner", which served to bring good luck and as a way of harnessing the spirit of nature"

 An observation he makes after waking up freezing cold one winter morning in Kazakhstan:

"The horses, by comparison, didn't seem to be suffering-and for good reason. Descendants of horses that had survived natural selection over thousands of years, they were equipped with a physiology uniquely adapted to the extremes of the steppe.....their hairs, lifted slightly away from the body by special muscles under the skin, gave them the ability to regulate heat loss. Later, in the Ukraine and Russia, where people had a more Western approach to horses, I was told that leaving horses in the open without winter blankets, as nomads did, was unimaginably cruel. I came to think that this view was based on one of several misconceptions that many Westerners hold in relation to the natural horse and therefore the culture of horsemanship on the steppe. Horses in Europe, after all, are blanketed largely to prevent the horse from growing a long winter coat....and if a horse has been blanketed from a young age, the muscles under the skin that control the movement of the hair and thus regulate heat are not able to develop. The horses are therefore unable to keep themselves warm, the need for blankets being a human-induced one"

 Well worth a read, lots of info about the history of the regions he travels, more recent (and at times quite harrowing reading) as well as during Genghis' 13th century journey of conquest. And as you can see, there are some stunning pictures.....

A gallop round the golf course.....

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....

 

 

 

Happy days :-)

Why I'm happy to have dirty horses......

Since moving back to the UK there is one thing about the horses that I see here that is really noticeable. They are pretty much all rugged, all of the time. Even when, as it was this last weekend, the weather is sunny and mild and in fact temperatures have been as high as 18 degrees C. We haven't had a cold winter at all, just a very wet one, and that I suspect is a large part of the reason for the extra layers.

When it rains and we get wet, we get cold. Horses don't though. Mine have nice thick waterproof coats that prevent the rain from actually getting through to their skin. You can see in this pic of Gandalf that the white clean bit near the skin is actually dry.

This was taken after weeks of rain. They don't have a field shelter, if it gets really windy the go and hide in the hedges. At night they have to come in to a yard with an open sided barn attached since the landowner doesn't want the horses on the land 24/7 in winter. They are always wet in the morning if it's been raining overnight so clearly don't take shelter in the barn. Unlike the cows they share with!

The other thing about the rain is, well, the mud. Here's how muddy our field has become this winter....

And I reckon this is the real reason for that nice waterproof jacket people seem prepared to spend sometimes hundreds of pounds on. Cos underneath that rug, he'll stay "nice" and clean. Nice for the owner, that is.

But do these owners stop to consider how that horse must be feeling under his rug when the sun is out and the day warms up? When he's losing his winter coat and would love to roll as it's so itchy? Or how he must feel when it's been raining so long the rug is saturated and he can't dry out once the rain stops?

 

Horses don't care how dirty and muddy they are, in fact for Gandalf it would appear the muddier he gets, the better......

 

It's just the humans who care.

 

Someone (who clipped, rugged and stabled her horses) once told me I shouldn't call myself Chevalblanc on the forum we used to frequent as my horses were never white. It would seem that for some people appearance is more important than a horse's wellbeing. Spending a load of money on rugs with pretty patterns on them must make these people feel better, same as tucking their horse up into a nice warm stable at night does. Shame it doesn't make the horse feel better. If you still doubt that, check out this article......

 

Oh, and my horses are white, but only in the summer ;-)

 

 

 

Poor Skysie..... :-(

So recently, young Skyfaxa has finally started to get her act together. After her little strop at the TREC the other week, we weren't expecting too much when we went back to the stables for the half term fun show. To be on the safe side, I entered her in the mini jumping class, and Ali was fully expecting to be beaten by a four year old on a lead rein.

But no, Missy decided she'd be fine with going into the indoor school this time and actually made an effort to jump some of the (tiny) obstacles!

Which meant we felt a bit guilty entering a 13 year old against the tinies, we had to explain why to the other parents, some of whom, having jumped round alongside their 4 year old bouncing about on a small hairy pony, were giving us frosty looks and muttering about unfairness.....especially when it turned out Sky had won!

So Ali immediately started planning more stuff to do, after all, she's rising 5 and will be capable of a bit more than last year when, as always, there's a setback. She came in looking a bit short in front the other night and the next morning was definitely lame in her near fore. Nothing obvious form looking at the hoof, but I suspect there's an abscess brewing. Given our previous experiences with getting them dug out, and the conditions in the field right now, we've decided to just leave it to work its own way out. I think I'm with Joe Camp on this anyway....

Mini pony club

At Tumpy Green, they do something called Mini Pony Club, for 4 - 6 year olds, and the SNO has been very excited about going. She gets to spend time with other similarly pink small girls and cuddle fat hairy ponies but also half of the session is in the classroom learning about things to earn badges.

It's amazing the motivational properties of a small piece of embroidered cloth.....

So the first week, they did this

and this

and this

and she got one of these

Today's classroom session was about poisonous plants and what ponies can and can't eat.

 In case you were wondering, here's the list she made:

So now you know :-)

No badge yet, they have to finish the session next time and find pictures of bad plants to bring in. Maybe we should tell them about Kinna and the St John's Wort......?