Plastic bags......

As it was pretty soggy this weekend, instead of riding we did some bag-on-a-stick practise. Something I do with all of my horses.......

Hollie's little Polo is very nervous of sticks and unusual things in general (he was terrified of the measuring stick the other week) so I showed her some stuff to do with him. He was prepared to sniff it but it wasn't allowed to get out of his field of binocular vision at first......

But we kept at it, kept it on his side until he stopped moving and immediately removed it when he did. He finally realised it wasn't going to hurt him, but he was actually trembling to start with......

Ebony was having a good look at all this going on so I flicked it at her and......she tried to eat it!! Ruby not so keen....but nowhere near as scared as Polo.

The ultimate test though was Sorcier who can't cope with any sort of crop or whip anywhere near him, so I ignored him and played with it with Kinna and becasue she didn't run away from it he decided not to take to the hills in his usual fashion and after a while even went as far as sniffing it!

That was enough for one day as far as he was concerned though, it wasn't allowed to move towards him at all!!!

So he wandered off, all the while keeping an ear on the scarey bag.....while Kinna kept hoping it would suddenly contain some carrots!

Ebony......

Did a bit of work with Ebony today, introduced her to a few things, like a saddle cloth....

....and a saddle....

....and some weight!

She took it all in her stride, really, think she's got the idea that she can trust us.......  :-)

The farrier came

Farrier came this morning (eventually, over an hour late). Got the ponies in from the field, it's a wild wet and windy day here so they were a bit skittish but settled down with a haynet by the stables.

Took some pics of Ebony's feet before the trim

Bit of a mess.......

She was a good girl for him mostly

only tried to rear a couple of times......!

Her feet are a lot better now, he said she's had laminitis, you can see where the laminae have come unravelled at the toe from this pic of a bit he cut off.....

Ruby wasn't too bad either, she only tried to bite him the once

.

 A couple of times when the wind really got up she didn't want to stay still so he had to let go of her and she flinched away, clearly expecting to get walloped for moving :-(

So now they have nice trimmed feet

Pretty good girls considering how awful the weather is!

Getting to know the girls

Spent a bit of time with the pones today. They weren't too sure about my dog at first, but then she was running round like a loony growling for no readily apparent reason......once they realised she was actually more scared of them than they were of her they stopped worrying!

Ebony is starting to trust us already, Ali spent ages grooming and scratching her and generally being nice to her. We picked up her feet, no problems, hope it'll be the same for the farrier on Friday...

Got some more ticks off her too, and bot eggs......and tried Kinna's old rug on for size, although she doesn't need it yet, very mild here again.

So mild in fact as I was amazed to discover there were about 20 mouches plates under poor old Ruby!! Rubes reminds me of Chester when he arrived, she makes the ears back "I'm cross back off or I'll bite you" face, but within half an hour she'd stopped doing it as nothing bad had happened to her. She stood with her top lip wobbling whilst I removed all the mouches and a fair few ticks.....

When we picked her feet up she wasn't so keen but she did it without too much protest. She was giving everything a good looking at, even people walking along on the far side of the river, I guess they didn't have a lot going on in the last place, their field was down a private lane so there wan't a lot passing by! They haven't met the SNO yet, that should be interesting ;-)

Ruby and Ebony.....

....are two Equine Rescue France ponies who are coming to stay for a bit! Tanya and I went to do their annual home check a couple of weeks ago, only to discover that their guardian has moved to Spain and left a friend to check on them "every couple of days"!!!

They are too fat, their feet, particularly Ebony's are overgrown they are behind on worming and vaccinations and one of them hasn't been registered with the SIRE, all of which should have been done. So we collected them to bring them to Tanya's so we can get everything sorted and start the search for new guardians. Went to get them this morning, they were pleased to see us, came pelting across the field when they saw the car. Ebony was a bit silly prancing around and didn't want to be caught at first but we got her after a few minutes. Ruby went straight into the trailer, we didn't even have to break out the emergency bucket of feed (Low calorie balancer, naturally). Ebony wasn't so sure, she stood at the bottom of the ramp for a while, eventually I picked one of her feet up and put it on there, that seemed to reassure her so I encouraged her forwards again. She got stuck with both forefeet on so I did the same with a hind and then she was in. They were good as gold during the journey, when we arrived, Ruby backed down the ramp like a pro, but Ebony decided she just couldn't go backwards so we opened the front ramp for her.

They said hello to the residents....

...and were very calm really. No silly mareish squealing for a start! Took a load of big fat ticks off Ebony, going to have to give them a thorough going over I think.