Fete du Cheval

For once there was a Fete du Cheval local to us, in Ste Foy la Grande, so we toddled off this afternoon in the sunshine. To be honest, having been to a few of these things I was wondering if we'd see some sorry sights, and there were one or two who were looking a bit unhappy.....

These guys were all flinching away from people trying to stroke them, maybe not the best thing to bring them out in public.....

But there were many more nice looking horses, this huge girl is a Percheron belonging to the guy who sold me Gandalf, she must be twice as wide as him!

She was earning her keep doing carriage rides today....

As were some less than impressed looking donkeys!

And for the first time I actually saw some barefoot and bitless people, this Friesian stallion had beautiful feet, not just unshod but properly barefoot with lovely fat frogs on show when he did his party trick

Pretty sure I've seen them out riding before, with no bridle at all,  only a neckstrap. There were a couple of others in rope headcollars too.
My friend Marianne was there with her lovely paintings, handsome chap in the middle of the top row ;-)

And the Ste Foy Poney Club had some artwork on display too, rather liked this one :-)

There is a spectacle on later, but we had to come home as the SNO was having a tantrum at not being allowed to have a  Barbe à Papa, mainly due to buggering off when she should have stayed in the play area and giving Ali and me a hectic 10 minutes looking for her......

 

Never mind, she's back at school tomorrow.......

That donkey again....

Remember Rossy boy? The young donkey who was too much of a handful for his old owner? I originally blogged about him here
Anyway the elderly Appy I rehomed him with has since died so his owner found him somewhere else to live with a friend's horse. Only problem was getting him there. As she said it was only in St Michel de Montaigne which is only a few kms away I said no problem, I'll pony him there........
How hard can it be?

Well, remind me never to complain about Kinna's antics ever again. He was bucking, kicking, rearing, leaping about with all 4 feet off the floor before we'd even got to the end of the road. Not really his fault, he has been on his own for a while and not been out anywhere for ages. Gandalf was so not impressed, he hasn't been this pissed off with another equine since we ponied Coquinette to Naulet last year. He even aimed a kick at him a couple of times, he's never done that before!

Then we had some proper donkey plants, I'm not going that way, tail swishing, the lot. After about 20 minutes of this, Mike, who had set out running with us, doubled back to check we were OK and couldn't believe how little progress we'd made.......he took this pic of the horror actually standing still for a bit....

So on we went, but by now Gandalf had evidently decided to get this over and done with as quickly as possible so broke into a trot. Cue Rossy doing a spectacular display of cantering on the spot, more leaping, an attempt to bite him and finally nearly hitting the deck scrabbling about on the wet tarmac......I really with I had a headcam for moments like that!

Gandalf trotted on unperturbed, and we arrived at St Michel. Birthplace of the philosopher and poet Michel de Montaigne, not that Rossy cared about that. He was more interested in trying to chase the dog.

Great I thought, we can get rid of the little horror. except a quick call to his owner reveals it's not actually St Michel itself, but further on down another road nearly in the next commune. So I followed more directions and eventually ended up at Rossy's new abode.

Predictably he wouldn't go in to the field til I'd led Gandalf in, then the other horses started having a go at G, so I had to get him out of there, he didn't want to leave, Ross was showing everyone his heels, finally got G out of the field and left Ross to his new pals.

Far too much grass in there for him, but at least he's got plenty of space to run round and exercise. One of the other horses is off to a new home soon so he'll be left with one horsey pal, which is much better than being on his own.

Got back on G, headed home, got caught in the most enormous thunderstorm, totally soaked, G not bothered much by it but poor Choccy was totally terrified. Mike took the sensible option of getting a lift back with Rossy's owner. Gandalf was only really bothered by the road we were on turning into a river which meant he had to get his feet wet......

Really pleased with him though, he felt like his old self, full of beans, the grass & senior feed is obviously having the desired effect :-)

Some new stuff......

Couple of firsts for Sky today. Took her out for a walk and decided to see what she thought of the tunnel under the railway, a bit concerned at first, but went under it fairly happily.

Then I saw some cows. They were obviously youngsters, judging by the way they went haring off when they saw us. That got Sky's attention.......then they came haring back to check her out, she did a huge spook and ran snorting to the end of the long line.....but didn't go further.

 She checked them out a bit more and eventually got close enough to say hello......

...and even said hello to the little donkey in with them

Must take her there more often........

Trip to Beaumont

Today we took Seraphina up to Beaumont with us for our driving lesson to see what she would think of the carriages.

She took everything in her stride and was very curious, especially about the donkey!

We followed along behind the carriages absolutely fine.....

...and we even had a peek at the TREC PTV course

Ride and lead gets faster.....

More ride and lead today, took Kinna out with Gandalf. Took them down to the stable, Kinna tried to follow me into the barn to get the tack rather than being left with Gandalf...... Think he has done some disciplining of the girls recently (like the other day when Sky tried to get her head in his bucket, he went for the back of her neck and they both galloped off down the hill and he wouldn't leave her alone til she was on the other side of the field, then he galloped back up to his dinner - obviously recovered from Sunday's ride )

She was very unsure to start with and kept her head pressed against my leg, but after a while she relaxed and seemed to be happy enough. The only thing that spooked her was some cows running up to the fence, she was quite interested in the donkeys of doom, here's a little video:

We did quite a bit of trotting, Gandalf was full of beans today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6VqsmilBBY

And even a little canter going up the hill to the village although she can run faster than Gandalf with his little legs, she got a bit ahead of us, good job I always take them out on a long line!

Must get someone to video us doing that one day.....

Very good little girly

The Donkeys of Doom......

So earlier I scraped some of the mud off Maverick and Gandalf and went for a hack with a friend, Karen, who's housesitting for the mother in law at the moment. She's not had a lot of riding experience so I put her on Gandalf.


Maverick decided to be a git right from the start. Luckily I'd already briefed Karen and told her that G just ignores his shenanigans.....

He spooked at a road sign, a bird, a piece of (inert) plastic, a man with a wheelbarrow and a cat and that was just in the first five minutes! Then we got into the vines, he immediately decided he wanted to go for a run so we had an argument because Karen can only do walk and trot. At one point he was doing a nice piaffe.....

So we went back out onto the road alongside the vineyard, there were some scary men trimming the vines who had had the audacity to hang their dangerous coats on the fenceposts, there was a pile of terrifying grape skins just SITTING THERE LOOKING AT ME FUNNY, and we went past some other horses who were galloping round, he couldn't cope with that either.

So we went up the steep track up the hill, I thought that might wear him out a bit and he'll have less energy for buggering about. Which was fine until we got to the top and a bloody great white dog launched itself at the fence we were riding past. Off went Maverick, I made no attempt to stop him knowing that just makes him worse and hoped that Karen would have the sense to hold on tight - once Mav had decided to stop (he never goes far) I look back and there's Gandalf just standing there looking at the noisy dog, hadn't budged.

So we carried on, I thought that's the end of the excitement, how wrong could I be?

On the way home we were going down the hill and suddenly we came round the corner to see 5 donkeys in a field. Maverick for some reason is terrified of donkeys. They of course came up to see him, he was actually shaking and no way could I get him to go forward so ended up getting off. He does this incredible snorting like a dragon thing when he's really scared, head in the air, eyes rolling, Karen thought it was hilarious! The donkeys of course found all this fascinating and followed us along the fence which made him sure they were ganging up on him to jump him and eat him......

So I stayed on the ground till they were out of sight......

A couple of pics, couldn't get many as I didn't want to lose my iPhone during a spook.......

Riding on the beach.....

Something I've always wanted to do is a beach ride and as we were on holiday on the Isle of Wight last week, we took the opportunity to do so. Lovely sunny day, went with some friends and their children, really enjoyed it!

We even got to do a little canter.....

Later in the week we went to Carisbrook Castle, where they have a wheel driven by donkeys to raise the well bucket!

and a Shire horse centre where they have a 5 year old gelding who's already 19hh and still growing........