Another busy weekend

On Saturday we did a bit more endurance training, managed about 7 kms at 10km/h, G didn't seem too distressed by that. He was sweating buckets as usual, mind you, and Sorcier, as usual, wasn't.....

Later on, we got the Gazebo of Doom set up properly and did a bit of work with that. Sorcier may be able to outpace G at endurance, but he was not at all keen to get near the white, horse eating monster, even when his mate was not bothered about standing right underneath it......but we got him near it at least......

Then yesterday, the last dry day forecast here for a week, we decided to do some Interdressage, so here is Gandalf's Handy Horse video:

And Fina's Working Hunter Pony one:

Even found a bit of time afterwards to get the Umbrella of Doom out to further scare the ginger one, Fina helped us this time:

He'll get there in the end; she used to be scared of brollies when she first came, look at her now!

The Gazebo of Doom.....

At the moment we are working on a bt of desensitisation for my friend's Thoroughbred and today it was the turn of the Gazebo of Doom, you know the things, they always have one over the judges at competitions and I know the vet gates in endurance usually have several. I found a nice white one left over from my brother-in-law's wedding and we got it out this morning.

Gandalf:

"What?"

Sorcier:

"You are joking, right?"

"You're not?"

"Sure about this?"

"Oh, alright then......"

A few months ago he would have run a mile from a white scarey plastic thing like that.......

Here's some vid, the bit at the end with the stick is a breakthrough too, he is (was?) really scared of crops......

Summer stuff

Haven't done much with the horses recently due to the 40 degree plus temperatures we've had.....and the usual influx of summer visitors. Managed a couple of hacks out.....

....and Ali rode Sorcier, Tanya's thoroughbred, for the first time. He's over 16hh but she doesn't exactly look tiny on him!

She's doing her first dressage competition on Sunday, she knows the test and has practised a lot, but Seraphina is not always too keen on doing it, the other day she tanked off every time she was asked to canter.......

I have done a Practical Horsemanship class with her for Interdressage, it looks a lot calmer than it felt!

She has a training session up at the new club on Saturday afternoon, let's hope she decides to be a good girl and listen.......

Busy horsey weekend

After two weeks of not riding, I finally got out and about a bit this weekend. On Friday evening I took Ali and Hollie out for an amble along the river. First time Gandalf and Chester had been out for a while, at the first canter they both did some little bucks before charging off.......
Then on Saturday we took Fina and Polo up to the club at Bergerac to do some jumping practise. He has been running out and getting eliminated at jumping competitions so we wanted to recreate the whole show experience and see if with Louise's help Hollie could get him back on track.

He usually does this

So Louise got Hollie to really get him going in front of her leg and listening to her. Once he realised she meant business, he got on with the job. Shame about the spook at the end! She got back on and finished the course though.

Seraphina was all over the place, mind most definitely NOT on the job, she had spent the night with Sorcier, and was  in season and being very mareish.....so Ali had to work at it too!

Then we went for a nice hack this morning, Sorcier for the first time in weeks, wearing his new Easyboot Epics, didn't seem to bother him at all. The girls wanted to hooley off all the time, but Soso was supposed to only be walking, and Mike was with us too. We had to keep Fina away from the others as she was in full on flirt mode, which involved flashing her bum at the boys, then squealing and trying to kick them when they showed some interest......all four boys did some willy waving though, they're still interested even though none of them has the required equipment! I rode Ches in the bosal as the strap on his Myler bit has broken, and had no problems with the brakes. He did want to hooley off with the others, but when told not to, he went into power walk mode!

Apart from the hormonal mare it was a lovely hack, not too hot, bit of sun. Map and pics here (can't work out how to embed Everytrail trips......)

and when we got back, Seraphina jumped 80cms! :-)

Sunny Sunday

Another nice hack with the OH yesterday, we needed to get out to cheer ourselves up after hearing some sad news and Aliénor came along too! First time she's been out riding with her dad.....

Gary came too with le Sorcier, although he was a bit subdued, something to do with some football match being lost on Saturday ;-)

Nice bit of sun, went for an amble round the vines above Pessac.

Gandalf continued his quest to lengthen Mike's arms by grabbing for grass as often as possible.....

...but he is getting the hang of stopping him some of the time now!

Love this pic of Gary and Ali

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!

What Sundays are for......

Got loads done today, went out for a hack this morning with the Speed Twins, Gary and Hollie, here's the  map and photos, we did a bit of ditch jumping practise, Gandalf and Polo, no problem, but Sorcier had to be persuaded over most of them!! Gandalf wore himself out again trying (and failing)to keep up with Sorcier.....

Then this afternoon I went out with my girls, Skyfaxa was very good about Fina cantering away....

...in fact nothing bothers her as long as she can eat grass!

Discovered on the way back that she'll do some nice lateral moves if she thinks it'll get her to the grass on the verge!

And we discovered some pretty spotties, one of them looks a lot like Sky's sire, must find out who they belong to.

Fast ride

As the weather is still ridiculously good, I have managed to go riding every day for a week, which is a bit of a first for me!!

Today Gandalf and I went out with Gary  and Soso. We had a bit of a hooley, lots of nice places to canter in the vines, Gandalf at one point was flat out galloping to stop Soso overtaking him, Soso just cruised past at a canter.......poor G just can't do the speed!!

He did jump a ditch that Soso refused to go over though

When we got back we couldn't resist going over the log that's still there from the trec course either.....

Here's the map & pics thingy: http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=1358779

and this is how sweaty he got trying to keep up!!

Horse transporters r us

Yesterday we spent the day moving horses around! First we had to take Soso up to the stables where he'll be at livery all summer. He didn't want to load. We spent nearly an hour getting him in the trailer, he eventually went in but as soon as the ramp went up he panicked big time and we were worried he'd do himself an injury so I fetched Seraphina and loaded her next to him, which calmed him down.

So off we went, unloaded them at the other end, Soso was a bit stressed so Seraphina had to go with him and check out the stable block.....

She had to stay with him until another horse was fetched so he wouldn't be on his own. Then she went back in the trailer, calm as you like!

We went back and fetched Chester then took the two of them to the new field I've rented.

The new field has a LOT of grass so I've cordoned off a small bit to start with, before they went in there we let then have a hooley around in my friend's big field next to it

then they went down to the new bit, they are as happy as the proverbial pigs in poo!!

The dentist came.....

...and everyone was pretty well behaved, really. The dentist is a lovely chap, very calm and unworried and the horses sensed this and were at ease with him.

Chester was his usual laid back self, even had a bit of nose wobbling going on which he usually does when he's getting a scratch so he must have been feeling good about it!

I brought Seraphina over whilst he was being done so she could have a look at what was going on and when it was her turn she was as good as gold.

He said she has excellent teeth, which is usual for Fjords apparently, and needed very little doing.
Even Sorcier was OK with it, a little apprehensive at first but he soon settled down.

After that we went up to see the boys and Maverick decided he wasn't having any of this strange metal stuff anywhere near him at first, he even did a couple of little rears......

But Ian persevered and got there in the end. He doesn't tie them up, if they start moving around he just goes with them and they soon realise it doesn't hurt and that moving away doesn't make it stop so they let him get on with it. Bit of a change from the French vet who came to do it last time and sedated them all as a matter of course......

Gandalf was a star as usual although he apparently kept trying to chew on the rasp......

....and it was hard work because he has very tough teeth!

And then there were five......

Well I now have five horses in the garden.......Tanya is going to the UK for Christmas so we rode her two over here on Monday.

Lovely sunny day, a nice ride except that Chester kept trying to pull my arms off getting his head down to graze........ponies, eh?

Then on Tuesday my friend Sue and I walked the girls over here, another lovely sunny winter's day....

Sky was very interersted in some horses in the field behind Sue's house, heavy horse mares, Gandalf lived with them for a bit a couple of years ago, they're nice girls.....

Then yesterday I went to fetch Gandalf as we were supposed to be going to do a Christmas fun ride today (annoyingly we had a load of snow last night so that had to be cancelled). On the way we stopped at my friend Jennie's and she gave us some mince pies, G seems quite fond of them.....

Jennie's little dog, however was NOT fond of Gandalf, when Jennie asked me to hold him for a photo, he was so scared of G that he weed all down my leg......

I'm not smiling, it's a grimace!!

So now I have 5 horses here, all eating hay like it's going out of fashion, but they seem to be getting on alright. Will have to wait til it thaws out a bit to take Gandalf back up to Jane's......

More sunshine!

Having had a few more soggy days, when the sun reappeared today out we went again......this time Tanya rode Le Sorcier.

Only one hairy moment when Soso got spooked by a dog, he doesn't mind the barking ones but this one snuck up to the fence and started growling. Even Chester jumped a bit!

We went past the Percheron girls, they came rushing up to see us......

Chester seemed quite taken with them!

The sun came out!!

After days of rain it was lovely weather today so we went for a little ride, Chester's first hack out since his arrival. Tanya's friend Lena rode Le Sorcier, and both boys were brilliantly behaved, no spooks or silliness at all. The only problem was that Chester had to do twice as many strides as Soso, we kept getting left behind!

Very impressed with the short hairy boy, he had a good look at loads of stuff but didn't stop and never gave me a moment's cause for concern. We saw bicycles, trucks, a little French bloke out walking his sheep (really) and Chester was not bothered at all.

We met some new friends too.....

And went past the place I'll be buying when we win the Euromillions.....

I love it when we get brilliant blue skies like this, don't suppose it'll last......