Don't try this at home.......

Was watching Horse and Country TV last night and Monty Roberts and Kelly Marks were doing a desensitising demo. There was a lot of warning people not to try this with their horses etc, but we ignored that this afternoon.......

Having done a lot of work previously with them, I knew Gandalf and Seraphina wouldn't have a problem with the whole flag thing.

Or the standing up thing (I had a go at this but am too fat and old to actually manage to stand up so my glamorous assistant did it instead)

Polo and Sorcier, on the other hand, weren't letting it anywhere near!!

We went back to a somewhat smaller flag for Polo but he still wasn't keen......

.......and I spent a while walking around the old boys' field carrying that same tiny flag, wth Gandalf following me everywhere, before Soso would even stop long enough to look at it. Have left it wedged in a fence post to see if he gets a bit more used to it.......

It takes time and patience but I reckon it's worth it, last weekend's jumping competition was very windy and so many horses refused to go anywhere near the judges becuase they had a flappy tent over their table......but Seraphina didn't turn a hair.

Horse Agility

Have been investigating doing some online agility competitions, the International Horse Agility Club runs them on their site here: http://www.thehorseagilityclub.com/page ... ility.html

Lots of it is what we do for TREC and Label Loisir anyway, and as an added bonus there are no turnout marks!!! Bit disappointed to only finish 6th in the Interdressage Happy Hacker class, largely due to low marks for turnout, especially as I was the only one to actually do some hacking in my video.......

Anyway, had a practise session with Sky today, she surprised me by refusing to go under a curtain to begin with, she couldn't work out how to get her head under it.....

Eventually she decided to go under, but really rushed, she obviously wasn't happy about it. So we did it again, and again and again until she was happy to walk calmly through

The flag posed fewer problems...

...and the ball none at all!