I am a leaf on the wind... Watch how I soar

Not me, obviously. Ali has been doing a fair bit of soaring this week. Jumping practise with Nahiade yesterday, ready for another comp on Sunday, she's entered in the 80cm class....

Nahiade has a habit of drifting to one side to get back to her mates quicker so Ali had to address that, and at the same time stopping her from rushing the fence. She's a complicated beastie due to past treatment and it's taken Ali weeks of patience to get to know how to handle her, but she's getting there..... :-)

After the riding lesson, she went to ride Chester as he's not done much recently. He really isn't a complicated beastie, he doesn't see the point of exerting himself when he could be eating some nice grass but when revved up to it he can jump nicely, anything up to 80cms is nae bother.....

But when Ali put it up to the next notch (which is 104cms, strange grading on those plastic jumps) he decided actually that would require some serious effort and thinking about it, he'd really rather not....

But with a bit of encouragement, he actually did it, and left the pole up!

That's the most work he's done for ages.........he's not exactly showjumper material (we got him on a weighbridge recently, at 13.3 hh he weighs 530 kilos, even Gandalf only weighs in at 554!) but I think it does him good to do something different once in a while.

Love him :-)

Back to the horses....

So enough ranting and messing about with online awards (for now), and back to what the horses have been up to.....

Have done a couple of lungeing/long lining sessions with Sky. It was somewhat noticeable that Sky seems less than impressed with this idea, I'm pretty sure she thinks she should just be a field ornament. So she decided to try and bog off on the lunge, then did some nice airs above the ground when asked to canter. When these cunning plans failed to result in me going away and leaving her alone to eat grass, she grudgingly got with the programme and did some vaguely reasonable circles on both reins.

But, as with Chester, it is painfully obvious she finds going round in circles a bit dull. So do I, to be honest, so I put on some long reins and took her out for a spin. This resulted in very much more in the way of cooperation, in fact she didn't even look back at Tari, but strode out ahead. And didn't stop and try to eat, either, for a change!

Yes, I know, her tail is disgusting, because she doesn't lift it high enough and poos in it. I do occasionally try to wash it, honest!!

Then today I took the old boy out for a ride, for the first time in weeks due to him having had COPD. He hasn't been coughing for a while though so I thought I'd see what he was like out and about. Turns out he was absolutely fine, we only did about 5kms but a good half of that was at trot (his choice) and a couple of times he broke into a canter without too much distress in the breathing department.

We went over the river for the first time in months and discovered that the calcaire track has been resurfaced with new gravel which seems to meet with Gandalf's approval as he walked and trotted along it quite happily without constantly trying to get on to the verge. And Ches didn't even spook at the plastic-festooned tractor ;-)

Horsewatching.....

Chester has come to stay for a couple of days and my little herd has been disrupted. Kinna, who is at the bottom of the heap, was quick to impress upon him that she is in charge.....

......and Sky wasn't exactly welcoming either!

Then a bit later they had a mad five minutes, much rushing around and bouncing from the girls whilst Ches tried to stay out of the way and Gandalf just stood there waiting for them to get over it......

Got this great shot of Kinns getting it out of her system!

First TREC of the year

Yesterday was fun. We went up to Beaumont again for a TREC special PTV competition. Ali got to ride Sunny, Tamzin's big bay horse and she also did a round on Ches. We got there a bit early so we had a sneak preview of the course, to show Ras, Tamzin's 5 year old Arab, that nothing was going to eat him......

Then Isabelle and the rest of the team showed up so we got the horses ready and the competition started. Tanya went first on Chester. He did his usual ambling along, tried to eat the gate, got his head down during the immobility and generally did the least amount of work possible.....he woke up enough at the end to actually jump the hedge though!

Polo went next and was fine, unsurprising given his gymnkhana background.....

and given his size the low branch wasn't exactly a challenge!

 

 

Then it was Ali's turn on Sunny. He is 16.3hh and not exactly skinny, so it's a lot of horse to hold together. There was an interesting moment at the gate opening.......here she is saying "what do I do now?!"

She got it closed in the end without dropping it though, somewhat unorthodox technique....

Unfortunately, the low branch was a bit too low for Sunny....

But he jumped beautifully, I think Ali might have enjoyed that bit!

She also managed to get on him from the ground, she's very bendy.....

Little Ras was funny, he did fine with most of it, then suddenly decided the gate was out to get him and shot off across the course, I had to dive out of the way after I'd taken this pic!

Then Ali did a round on Ches, who decided he was going to be scared of the carriage that came trotting up the road and leapt out of the middle of the ruelle he was supposed to be crossing.

So Ali came 6th on him, Hollie was 4th and Ali came third on Sunny. The winner was a girl on a Merens riding in just a headcollar, she was brilliant!

Looking forward to the next one......would love to take Kinna next time to see how she copes.

Memory lane.....

An old schoolfriend sent me some photos recently. When we were kids, she had ponies and kept them at the stables where I learned to ride. You may remember me lamenting the fact that my parents never took any photos of me on a pony, but hers sure did.

So no pics of me, but plenty of memories.....here's my friend Sarah on her Connemara, Seamus

Another friend, another Helen, with the two escapist ponies, Clocky and Tumbler

Sarah and Helen hacking in the woods, the pony in the middle is Fothergill, the reluctant jumper:

And finally, a pic in the school of Fothers, actually jumping something!

Can't remember who the girl is riding him, obviously she was better at it than me!
I think Chester might be a reincarnation of Fothers.... ;-)

 

Teenage kicks.....

Have been having some issues with Kinna recently, serious temper tantrums at not being allowed to graze.  Saturday's protest of choice was rearing, we took her to the field over the road to try and do a bit of ridden work and she really threw her toys out when prevented from eating. Ali sat tight and clutched the grab handle and when she'd finished, guess what, she STILL wasn't allowed to eat.....

Got Ali off and did some groundwork, Kinns is definitely not bothered by Chox (who thinks it's a great game), she explodes every time I ask her to more forward and stop her eating. She got it a bit wrong at one point....!!

Times like this I wish had a sand school...

That's what you get for having no winter grazing I guess, she hasn't got enough space to hooley on the mud in our "field" and a hay only diet makes her want grass all the time. Can't blame her really......Anyway, fair play to Ali, she got back on and we went for a hack afterwards and she was far more reasonable.....

Turns out Saturday was a bit of a workout for Ali, she had her riding lesson on Chester in the afternoon, who it appears is not so keen on being a riding school pony and pulled out his party piece to see if that'd get him out of it, and when it didn't he tried refusing to jump instead. At the ripe old age of 8, he should know better, but ponies never really grow up, do they?

Snow? What snow?

So it's been snowing in a lot of places, apparently. People keep posting pics of themselves doing cool stuff in it, like this from some friends ooop north in Normandy:

But here? A light dusting of snow overnight on Thursday. Already melting by the morning. But elsewhere in the Dordogne apparently they had a good amount of the stuff, which meant that naturally all the school buses had to be cancelled in the whole department.....then we had lots of rain. Lots and lots of rain. Enough to flood the concrete in front of the stable. And the stable itself (luckily the hay in there is on pallets). Still, the ducks are happy at least.....

Anyway, last night we had a load more rain, followed by a bit more snow. But again, the roads were clear, so Ali and I decided to go up to the stables and get the horses out. The sun even came out :-)

Found a nice fallen tree in the woods for the girls (and dogs!)

By the time we got back, most of the snow had melted though and now we're back to mud, mud and more mud (and flooding). Ah well.......such is winter.

Hacking and things.....

It's that time of year to start making resolutions I suppose, not that I ever do really. But this year one thing I am goign to aim for is more hacking out. Last year big G clocked up a total of 580kms (I only started counting cos someone told me barefoot horses just can't do the distance on the road that shod horses can, mind you) but I reckon we can outdistance that this year.

I am going to aim for getting out on a horse 300 days this year. Probably won't happen with all the rest of the stuff I have to do but it's good to have aspirations.......

Today we started the ball rolling with a 7km hack - as it's still the holidays that meant with the SNO along for the ride so we couldn't go too far before the "my legs hurt/he's too sweaty/my boot's falling off" chorus commenced.....

Lovely sunny day for it though :-)

In fact we've had a few good days lately which has meant we could do this

 

 

and this

and this

and this.....

Happy New Year everybody!

Pony jumping again

Went to another jumping competition last weekend and had an interersting day, as ever at these things. First problem was the guys marshalling the car park couldn't work out where to put the trailer as it was so long, we got the usual stares from the locals.......then we unloaded Chester, and attracted more stares and "what is that?" comments

Got him and Fina tacked up, took them to the collecting ring, sent Ali in on Fina who immediately started playing up as she didn't want to leave him, then didn't want to do any work and kept trying to head out the gate......this is what happens if she doesn't get her usual amount of work I suppose. Anyway, Ali got her back on track and concentrating on going over some jumps and once she'd let off a bit of steam she soon settled.

Meanwhile I narrowly avoided being mown down by a child on a small Shetland who had no control whatsoever when said Shetland decided to tank off out of the arena and scoff some grass......

Eventually, after the usual Obligatory French Faffing About Time (OFAT), as Mike calls it, it was Fina's turn to jump. I was wondering how she would react as it was in an indoor school for the first time, but she was fine about it and just ran out at one jump because, as Ali said herself, she got her line wrong.

 

Then Ali went and warmed Chester up. I stayed with Fina and thus didn't hear some of the comments the locals were making about Ches, according to Ali and Hollie it was along the lines of "look at the size of those legs, he'll never get off the ground" (if I had I would have had something to say to them, I can assure you). Anyway, Ches cleared the practise jumps beautifully so hopefully that shut them up!

We were all hoping he'd go clear in his round to prove them wrong but unfortunately as soon as he went in he was looking around a bit concerned and I guess he'd never been in an indoor school before. He had a refusal, then jumped it and carried on round but having a really good look at them all, and after a couple more runouts, got eliminated. But the ones he did jump, he didn't touch......

 

 

Still, we were pretty pleased with him first time out and I think a few jumping lessons up at the club and he'll be good to go for future comps.

We watched a load more classes, there was far too much in the way of strapping mouths shut/gags/martingales etc for my liking and a lot of uncomfortable looking horses, as well as far too many kids wearing spurs and clearly not knowing how to use them properly......

And the inevitable breaking loose of horses from trailers followed by running shouting owners. Every single time, that happens.......

TREC competition at Cleyrac

Just got back from the most brilliant day. Apart from the usual French organisation problems of course...... 

Showed up at 8.30, got ready to go out on the POR (orienteering), only to have to hang around for ages because they were running late. Got our equipment check done, by a chap who used to be our farrier, as it happens, he asked where our "marechalerie" stuff was, we said no shoes, don't need it......

Headed out on the course, quite a short one compared to usual, only 8 kms or so. Made lots of noise as the hunters were out in force!!! One bit had to be done at 8kms/h which suited G as he's definitely in endurance mode these days and wants to bomb off everywhere The last part was only 6kms/h though and we ended up doing the most fantastic collected trot down the hill at the end as he wanted to rush back to the trailer and I wanted him to slow down!!!

Then it was the Control of Paces. Slight problem here being that he didn't want to leave his mate. So he was reluctant to go away from him to the start, then shot off thinking he was going back to him, tried to do just that, I said no, he dropped to a trot for one stride so we lost all our points, and I lost a stirrup but made him canter to the end anyway......

Then lunch. Which lasted about 3 hours. So we didn't get on the PTV (obstacle course) til nearly 4pm........

Worth the wait though as it was a huge long course with loads of space to hooley around, more like a cross country course!

G as usual was not keen on jumping, I am telling him to "get over it you bugger" in this pic...

But he was well up for the rushing around....

 

Ches was brilliant too

 

SNO's teacher, Louise, was there as well, riding Hector, who had his moments

And Aude was there, the lady from Naulet where we spent a weekend doing TREC training last summer....

Anyway, after all that there was a lot more sitting around and waiting, but when it got to 6pm and people were still going round the course, we gave up and came home. Louise stayed to the bitter end and got the results, she won the Club Individuelle, Tanya was second and I was fourth.

Would definitely go back there for another comp, great place......