Handy Horse, not so Handy Pony....

Well we filmed our Handy Horse tests today. Gandalf, first take fine, as usual. But the NNP sure made a reappearance today!! She jumped a practise jump superbly:

and was not bothered about the flag either:

But when it came to filming........mademoiselle was not ready for her public!!!

Here's the outtakes video, she didn't want to jump, be near the flag, go into the maze, stop to let Ali pick up the sword or go past the hoop......

But we got there in the end, here's the finished videowithout the jump though, we decided it'd be easier to just take that out......

And here's Gandalf's video, complete with Ali's Blairwitch style videoing and extraneous dogs.......

We have handy horses....

Had a bit of fun today practising for the Handy Horse class in this month's Interdressage competition. We had a load of plastic for them to walk over

a little maze

An arch with streamers

and best fun of all, jousting for a ring!!

Even Éowyn had to have a go at that.....

Seraphina goes solo

Seraphina was a star today, Ali wanted to ride but Gandalf has a nasty bite on his back so I don't want to ride him til it's gone. This meant that as Fina was with Mav over the weekend, we had to go and get her and bring her back to the others on her own.

Ali got on and headed down the hill......and off she went, without even a backwards glance at Mav! She seemed quite happy to follow the car, every now and then she'd come up alongside the door and poke her nose in the window to check I was still there!

She had a bit of a hesitant moment going past some cows, but didn't spook, just moved away from the fence a bit! The only spook we had was when a horse down the road unexpectedly stuck its head over a hedge, obviously took her by surprise. Very pleased with her, that's the first time she's been out alone since she arrived here.

Then we got to Marianne's and went into the carriere to do a bit of practise for the Interdressage Handy Horse class, she was a bit distracted by Marianne's horse, Gimy, who was racing round the paddock next to her, but soon settled down.

Then we turned her out with Gimy, who's currently on his own til Marianne can find a new horse, they had a fine old hooley round!