Baby horse update

Took the girl out for a walk the other day, she was a star, soooo much easier than Sky......

Éowyn took some pics and a couple of them were even in focus

 Then Éowyn asked if she could ride her, so she had a quick sit on. No problem, Tari just turned and sniffed her feet, then went over to the verge and started eating.......

So here is a first clip for her training video diary, Éowyn is every bit as good at Shakycam as her sister......

I have recently been getting her used to having me walk alongside her as well as in front or at her head, in preparation for starting some in hand training. As you can see, she thinks this gives her free rein (pardon the pun) to dive for the grass on the verge!

One year on......

Can't believe it's been a year already since I brought Tari home. This is what she looked like then

and here she is today

She was being a bit nosey bout Sky's tack, so I thought I'd see how she liked wearing it.....

....didn't seem too bothered!

Sky's extra wide cob saddle seems to be a good fit now so she's definitely going to need the treeless by the time she's old enough to ride!

Lovely day so we took her for a walk and jumped some ditches :-)

The dark horse returns....

So here I am again, spending a bit of time with Organza. Mixed day today......

She's just moved to a new home, still in her little herd of 3. They've been there for a few days, I didn't want her to get too settled into thinking she's retired, so went for a visit today. Took her out of the field, initial anxiety, then attempts to eat, then shuffling feet around, then the realisation that she's OK on her own but still knowing were they are.

After a few minutes, happy to stand with me doing nothing, still alert but not anxious. Moved her a bit further, one of the others called, anxiety returns, I wait. When I get a calmer horse again, we tack up, Cait tacks up Kyriane, we go for a walk, Ali on Organza, she's alert again but not too worried.

She watches Kyrie doing some trotting around and seems ok with that.

So I get foolishly overconfident and tell Cait she could go and do her own thing. As Kyriane hooleys away it's too much for the girl, me trying to get her attention back by using the lunge line seems to just make it worse, Ali does an (actually not very) involuntary dismount, Organza takes off after her friend, I lose a bit of skin on my hand as I didn't let go fast enough.......

Then we get her back, she's still stressed, actually shaking, she takes off again and heads off back to the field after a brief hesitation over whether to stay with Kyriane or go back to Netty. So we are clearly going to have to take things much, much more slowly. My fault, have forgotten what Fina was like at first.......

So we went for another walk, but just around the edge of the field and along the vines a bit so she could still see Netty, and then got Cait to move Kyriane away slowly........and when she was calm about it she got her to come back as a reward.

It's a start......

A walk in the woods.....

The 5x50 challenge is going well, have been cycling every day so far, so decided today to take the baby horses out for a walk instead. It rained last night and the woods smelled wonderful, so off we went.

Kinna was a star really, just those big giraffe ears moving around a lot to take in the new environment.

Sky was very silly to begin with (again), snorting and staring at offending rustling leaves and bending twigs. Kinna just carried on, even prepared to go trip trapping over the troll bridge without too much fuss.....

Sky tried to barge over, slipped on the wet wood and did a huge leap to get off at the end. Silly girl.

Anyway, after a while she settled down, and reverted to her usual pastime of trying to snatch as much grass as possible whilst still walking, she's pretty good at it now.

On the way back, we went past the lonely horse who was charging around with excitement at seeing the girls, they just stared for a bit!

It took us a whole hour to do the 5k, which is far too slow for the Marathon Man and occasioned much grumbling. Also, Ali and I kept stopping to admire other horses, passing countryside etc which isn't on, apparently.......

 

Took a bit of vid of Kinns, I just love her ickle feet!!

Long reining

Decided to try Sky with the long reins today (well OK, two bits of rope, have lent my long lines to Jane) with a bitless bridle, and she was an absolute star. Ali and Fina came along to give her a lead and she was quite happy to follow along, once she'd realised that snacking was not allowed

We did some trotting, she's pretty fast, I need to get fitter!!

We went all round the village, I thought she might be a bit insecure without someone at her head, but she seemed happy to know I was there behind her.....

She was also OK with Fina cantering off ahead, something I always practise, and she would trot on ahead of Fina.

We even went down to the Boulangerie, funnily enough she was less keen to go on ahead of me once I had some still warm baguettes under my arm!!!

Love my spotty girl :-)

Rain, rain, go away......

It's been fairly wet here since we got back from the UK, but today it hasn't stopped raining hard all day. By four o'clock Ali and I had had enough of being cooped up so we got kitted out and took the girls for a walk.

They didn't seem to mind, especially as there was something to eat en route!

Sky had a bit of an issue with running water though, she was highly suspicious of the noise at first and did a fair bit of snorting

Fina just tried to drink it.......

Then we headed home down the road, where Sky decided she didn't like the noise the cars made going past in the wet, we stopped by the road for a while so she could eat the verge and after a while she stopped flinching every time a car went by.

Their field is half lake at the moment, still, at least the ducks are happy......

We were supposed to go and do a SJ comp with the kids tomorrow, but as we don't fancy getting towed out of the "car park" (waterlogged field) by a tractor, we're going to give it a miss......

Kinna goes solo

Took Kinna out on her own today. Was expecting some shenanigans as she hasn't been away from other horses for months and months, but she surprised me!
We went over the bridge, she had a good look at everything but happily followed me over.....

She didn't mind any of the traffic, we went through the little town and she was OK with that and we went down the path by the river.

She was unworried enough to graze, we went right down to the water, she didn't go as far as getting her feet wet but she was quite happy to stand there whilst Choccy hoolied in and out of the water.....

Then after a bit more grazing we went back along the river to the quai. She was more concerned about going under the bridge, she spooked at a rattly tractor going over it when she was about to go under, but in the end she was OK. The other side of the bridge is a flight of stone steps that go back up to the top, I was going to carry on along to the road that goes up, but Kinna had other ideas - she saw Choccy go up the steps and she started following her! She skipped gracefully right up to the top with me rushing along behind her, then stopped dead as if to say "how did I get up here?!"......

She's a funny little character. Apparently she's been investigating the toilet blocks on the campsite when let out to graze so she's obviously been practising her stairs technique

Mind you, she isn't so little any more, she's really growing now, must get the stick out and measure her.

Full of the joys of spring.......

Very "interesting" walk out with Sky this morning, lots of silliness and spooking.......which is not like Little Miss Sensible at all!

We met Choccy's two greyhound mates again, she was not happy about them running round at all, them there were tractors in the vines and a MAN WITH A WHITE BUCKET!!!! Cue much snorting, jumping about and giraffing.....even after I went to talk to him (not that he was too keen on being approached by the lunatic on the other end of my leadrope.....)

She kept a very careful eye on the tractor putting in fenceposts too....eventually calmed down enough to stuff down some grass in that kind of "better eat quick cos I'll probably have to run away fom that in a second" kind of way......

Which is probably the problem, she doesn't get a lot of spring grass, but maybe it's enough to set her off. Either that or she's being a hormonal teenager at the moment.......

Still, we finished our little circuit, which involves roads, grass and lots of varied stony/gravelly/rocky bits, so all good for her feet, which are a lot less prone to chipping since the barefoot trimmer has been doing them.....

A black horse for a change.....

My next project looks like being Tess's Merens mare, Organza. She has had a bit of a difficult journey with her horse, because Tess isn't a particularly strict person and Organza is a bossy, dominant control freak.....As Chester has gone back home I have a bit of time to help out with Organza now and I went up to ride her today.

The eventual aim is to get her hacking out alone, which she hates. Shes also not keen on going out and leaving her friend Coquinette behind. So we are starting off with her going out with Tess on Gandalf just calmly at a walk most of the time.

As there is room for only one bossy dominant control freak in my life (me) I had to make a few things clear from the start, like if I leave you standing somewhere, you don't wander off and eat grass (got me a grumpy look) and when I lead you to the mounting block you don't swing your arse around (rebellious look) and we stand still until asked to move off (mutinous look). Also, if Gandalf goes off ahead you wait nicely (murderous look, some skittering about) and you do have to go ahead of him sometimes (how slow can I walk...... what, you want me to trot?!), and looking at stuff funny and going sideways in the hope that such behaviour means we can go home now results in having to do shoulder in (what, on both reins?!)

Apart from that, good as gold ;-)

Snow!

It very rarely snows here in the Dordogne. But yesterday it did, big time!! Seraphina looked right at home......

It froze overnight so was all still there today, but the sun came out. No school for the girls so we went for a walk. Seraphina was in fine form......

......Sky was a bit unsettled to start with, she was especially concerned about this snowman:

But he didn't try anything, so she decided he was safe to walk past!
We did a bit of ditch jumping.....

...and Ali enjoyed cantering on the snow....

And we didn't have to worry about slipping as they're not shod :-)

Busy day

The trimmer came for his second visit today. He says all of their feet have improved, Ches and Kinna's are particularly good, and an 8 week interval is fine for them all as they do so much exercise. People have tried to tell me that unshod horses can't do lots of roadwork as their feet will wear away, but Chester and Gandalf have shown otherwise!!! Sky's feet still have some flares but they are growing out, her feet look totally different since she's been having a barefoot trim rather than a farrier's pasture trim.....

 Ali got out of school an hour early so we took Gandalf and Sky for a walk. G can't be saddled at the moment because of his lump (which is getting smaller) so Ali hopped on bareback.

We went past the garden with the noisy Alsatian behind a plastic covered fence (it's the noise it makes jumping on the fence that bothers them, not the dog itself) and stopped to let them graze and get used to the wretched animal, as it's on one of my nice hack routes. Next thing I know, the dog's owner has come out and after calling it to totally ineffectually, had a go at us for winding his dog up!!! I got the chance to trot out some choice rude French words.........

Anyway, I achieved my objective, which is to get Sky not to jump when the dog jumps on the plastic. Mind you, the first time it did that, it made me jump too!!

After that we went to fetch Éowyn from school, horses totally unfazed by lots of screaming kids, not really a surprise considering they live with Éowyn really......

...and of course, she insisted on a lift home!

Chilly day at Beaumont

Took Ali up for her first session of the year at Beaumont today, very chilly!! Didn't hang around long at the stables, took the SNO and dog for a walk to warm up......

By the time we got back, the faffing to get the horses ready and out had just about finished....

 ...so we watched the lesson for a bit, but didn't get too close to the rail as the wet sand and mud was flying everywhere!!!

Then we headed off for lunch and when we came back to pick Ali up, Isabelle said she should be OK to do some jumping competitions this year. One very happy daughter......