So yesterday we took Sky for her first jumping lesson with the instructor that coaches the team at Ali's school. The venue was 5 miles away from the yard so Ali rode her there and I followed in the car, like we used to do in France.
Was going to hack over with her but G is pretty slow these days, took him out with Tari on the lead on Friday and he ambled along taking about 20 minutes to do a mile.......so we decided to get Sky to do it alone. Good experience for her anyway.......
She did her usual trick of following the car, so they trotted most of the way. She was pretty good considering that's the furthest she's ever been on her own and she had to negotiate some main roads......
When we got there, the usual shiny clean booted & rugged horses were being unloaded from trailers. Sky neighed at them but was cool with it all. She went off into the arena and did what she was asked - to start with, at least. Trotting poles, yeah, fine:
Small cross poles, well OK, if I must:
But anything bigger? Erm, no, thanks!!
You want me to do what?!!
The other big shiny horses were by this time flying over some rather large jumps but Sky just decided she didn't want to play any more. So we left it at that. The instructor suggested we hire an arena and have a couple of private lessons to start with. Might look in to that, as there's a closer arena that's nicer to hack to. This one was right next to the M5 which makes it very noisy!
There are a couple of cross country training days coming up, which I reckon Sky would prefer, since she's always happy to gallop around and pop a log out hacking. The problem with poles is she knows she can knock them over. But of course the X country venue is too far away to hack to.
Sky hacked home in record time, took her under an hour to do the 5 miles. As it was all roadwork, that didn't involve any cantering. And her heart rate wasn't too high when she'd finished. So maybe she'd prefer to do endurance?
So the people up at the stables are on holiday for a couple of weeks and guess who got the job of doing riding lessons?
Decided to put the girls through the torture I'd suffered at their age, namely jumping with no stirrups and reins, and naturally, they loved it....
And so for the second session this week I saddled up the old boy to see if I could have a go without falling off. I'm no good at jumping, never have been, (more on that here) but they seemed to be enjoying it and I thought if I'm supposed to be teaching them I ought to lead by example......and it did look like fun......
And actually it was!
I even pointed G at a bigger jump before I'd really given myself time to think of a reason not to and we managed it OK
Be a while before I could contemplate tackling that one with no stirrups though.....
In other news, Sarah tells me Kinns is looking a lot better and Sheila came to visit yesterday and asked me to sign Seraphina over to her so now I know our star girl has a brilliant forever home. Happy :-)
After the erm, interesting, time we had with Nahiade at the SJ competition, today I borrowed Ocarina's Dr Cook bitless to try with her during Ali's lesson. Have to say they were a bit sceptical up at the stables - will she be able to steer without a bit? What about the brakes? - but fair play to Carole for giving it a go. It appears that poor Nahiade has some sloppy dental work done in her previous home by someone with an electric rasp and that's why she's so sensitive in her mouth :-(
We noticed an immediate difference in her today, she still carries her head high, but nowhere near as much as she used to......
......and the real test, jumping, showed that she didn't feel the need to tank off after a jump (which she used to do at the club, albeit to a lesser degree than at that show), she stayed in a steady rhythm. And because she seemed less stressed, her roaring was much diminished :-)
And the steering and brakes worked ;-) So Carole is going to order her a bitless bridle of her own.
Ali said she could really feel the difference in stress levels. You can see what she used to get like in this pic from a few weeks ago:
Days like today really do make it all worthwhile :-)
An old schoolfriend sent me some photos recently. When we were kids, she had ponies and kept them at the stables where I learned to ride. You may remember me lamenting the fact that my parents never took any photos of me on a pony, but hers sure did.
So no pics of me, but plenty of memories.....here's my friend Sarah on her Connemara, Seamus
Another friend, another Helen, with the two escapist ponies, Clocky and Tumbler
Sarah and Helen hacking in the woods, the pony in the middle is Fothergill, the reluctant jumper:
And finally, a pic in the school of Fothers, actually jumping something!
Can't remember who the girl is riding him, obviously she was better at it than me!
I think Chester might be a reincarnation of Fothers.... ;-)
It's that time of year to start making resolutions I suppose, not that I ever do really. But this year one thing I am goign to aim for is more hacking out. Last year big G clocked up a total of 580kms (I only started counting cos someone told me barefoot horses just can't do the distance on the road that shod horses can, mind you) but I reckon we can outdistance that this year.
I am going to aim for getting out on a horse 300 days this year. Probably won't happen with all the rest of the stuff I have to do but it's good to have aspirations.......
Today we started the ball rolling with a 7km hack - as it's still the holidays that meant with the SNO along for the ride so we couldn't go too far before the "my legs hurt/he's too sweaty/my boot's falling off" chorus commenced.....
Lovely sunny day for it though :-)
In fact we've had a few good days lately which has meant we could do this
Not a big deal to a lot of people. Me, I never really liked it. Probably because the horse I learned to ride on was a fat old cob called Fothergill. Now my regular readers will know that I have no problems with fat old cobs, as Gandalf is one of those and he's the horse of a lifetime. But Fothers, as he was (un)affectionately known, was totally different. He seemed to me, as I was at the age of 10 or 11, to spend his entire life thinking up ways to make my life unpleasant.
He was stiff and wooden and when the other horses did a nice circle he would spend most of the time pulling on the bit to go in a straight line. He would stop dead when asked to trot. He really made me work for any kind of response in fact. At the time I called him a stupid horse. I didn't know any better. And he was really, really good at getting his rider to go over a jump without him......
He was hogged and trimmed in fine old British cob showing style, so I didn't even have a mane to grab on to. He would lumber up to the jump, exhibiting enough energy to fool me into thinking that he'd actually go over it this time, then stop dead and stand there as I somersaulted over his head and landed in the sand.
I never did develop enough of a good seat at the time to stay with him. I realise now, having seen another cob doing the same thing just today, that he'd simply drop his shoulder and as I was totally unbalanced, off I'd go.
Sadly I have no photographs of this equine paragon as my parents used to drop me off at the stables' gate and beat a hasty retreat. Not something my daughters can ever accuse me of!
Although Fothergill is long gone, his legacy lives on. Which means that I have spent a lot of time not jumping stuff because of those unpleasant memories. And to be fair, Gandalf doesn't exactly seem keen either. But as we need to pop the odd log for TREC competitions, we do have to occasionally make the effort.
Recently, a tree came down on the campsite. It's not huge, really, but it's very solid, in the way that only tree trunks can be. Needless to say, Alienor was merrily flinging ponies over it without a second thought straight away.
I looked at it the other day and thought......nah, bit too big.
Today the girls were again flinging ponies over it and I decided to go for it. Hadn't even had a drink at lunchtime.........and we did it!
Terrible position, as my daughter was quick to point out. I tend to adopt the hunting type "stay on at all costs" seat, rather than the elegant showjumping style the kids are taught. But WE DID IT!!!
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......)
A few more pics from the jumping on Sunday from the aforementioned posh camera, love this one of Fina in the air, shame about the poles in the way!
Then there's this one of Elodie jmping without stirrups after Peter put in a stop, well done that girl!
And I loved this spotty horse, jumped nicely and went clear
And here's Ali getting her prize
and Polo sampling some wine!
A couple more pics from today, from Éowyn's lesson at Louise's, they went for a hack and she was delighted with the new pony, Poppy, just the right size for her........ really should have kept Flecha, shouldn't I?
