A haircut and a hack....

The other day on Facebook, someone shared this photo.....

And ever since then Ali has been on at me to try that with Seraphina's mane. I finally gave in and we did this:

Not great really. So I chopped off the top bit and she'll have to live with the zigzags til it grows out. Not that she cares, obviously!

Lots of sunshine today so I dragged the kids out for a little walk. Ali took Fina as she needs to get used to being out on her own. She was pretty good, only tried to turn round and go home a couple of times, but Ali used the one rein flexions that we did last weekend and that seemed to work pretty well......

She did a bit of cantering OK......

....and at the top of the hill, the girls had to play on the big frozen puddle!

Practised some laterals......

......and some TREC!

Hopefully that's worn the kids out so there'll be less bickering now.......!

The Éowyn test.......

Took the girls out for a bit of in hand grazing yesterday (just as well as it's chucking it down today) and obviously had to take the Small Naughty One with me too. She and her sister ran around shrieking, Sky and Kinna just ignored them.

Grape harvesting machine went by, nothing......

After a while, I picked Éowyn up and leaned her over Sky's back, again, she wasn't bothered.

Neither was Kinna....

Skyfaxa has been having a very bad hair day, she'd managed to get her head between the gatepost and the wall to reach hay from the middle of the round bale as the easily accessible stuff on the outside obviously wasn't as nice, and in doing so has rubbed a huge section of her lovely long mane off.

Nothing for it but a complete haircut, no showing classes for us til it grows back, now her beard is longer than the rest of her hair!!

Luckily it grows pretty quicky, unlike poor Kinna who has the typical Appaloosa sparse mane & tail.

Measured them again, Sky is now 14hh and Kinna 13.2hh, they've each grown 2 inches since they were last measured.

Seraphina!

 Well, the great little Fjord has arrived at my friend Rochelle's place and we went to see her today. She has dealt brilliantly with the transport down here and being in a new place all on her own. When we arrived, Rochelle was leading her about the place, she seemed relaxed but interested.

Aftr a very nice lunch we brought her in and gave her a bit of a haircut, here's before:

and after! The Fjord mane is always two colours, black in the middle and blond either side, it looks so much better when it's trimmed.

The traditional cut involves having the blond bit shorter than the black bit like this:

Might take a while for me to get proficient enough to do that though, or maybe even zigzags like this!:

Then we tacked her up, she's not used to a bit so wasn't too sure about it, she's only been ridden in a headcollar before. But she went for a little walk no problem, we went to see the sand school (with Chocolate and Rochelle's dog Willie keeping an eye on us).....

....then we went into the round pen. This would've been a better pic if Jane (who took it) had got closer to the rails!! But you get the idea......

She was a little bothered by the bit and obviously didn't understand what it was for, but that's just a matter of education. Apart from that, she was a little star, the only other thing that bothered her was the fly repellant spray, but like Sky & Kinna, she'll get used to it. Looking forward to following her progress!