A new trainer......

Today we spent the day at Tess's doing a "stage" with French "ethologue" (horse whisperer) Eric Trelut. He's a great teacher, very patient and with a sense of humour! I really like his approach with the kids too, he pitches it just right.

Basically the morning session was with each horse at liberty in the round pen, he showed people how to get the horse's attention and how to move them around using body language, a lot like Adam Shereston does.

Some horses would move from the slightest cue, others needed a series of cues, each one "louder" than the last. So Seraphina would move away with just a look whereas Chester needed the rope throwing behind him before he decided to cooperate! But then Eric showed us that once he'd got the idea that he couldn't just stand around eating and needed to take some direction from people, he soon realised that a click of the tongue meant "off you go!". A lot of it was very slow movement, he doesn't do join up where you send the horse away, it's all about being able to direct them around, getting their attention, ie having both their eyes on you, and having them "with" you, which took some doing with some of them as there were a lot of distractions! Once he'd got the measure of each horse, he showed the owner how to do the same, then they had to move the horse by themselves. Here's a vid of him working with Ali and Seraphina:

Kinna was a bit of a challenge, she didn't want to listen at first, then she started getting anxious and bombing round like a loony so he worked on getting her calm and paying attention. He also did some bending the neck to move the quarters, she's so bendy she was touching her nose to her side without moving her quarters at first but once she realised what he wanted, she was stepping round nicely.

Little Polo was very wary of him at first, like he is with most people, but he will follow Hollie everywhere so he go them to do a few things together!

So that was the morning groundwork session, I'll do another post for the afternoon ridden session......

Freya....

Whilst looking through the pics for Aliénor's post the other day, I got sidetracked looking at Freya's photos and I realised she had been sold before I started this blog, so here is her story.

I bought Freya (or Nancie de la Lande as she is known by the Haras) as a ride for me once Ali was big enough to ride Gandalf. She was an Anglo Arab x Percheron, seven years old at the time, had been bred by the chap who sold me Gandalf for someone to use as a hunter but the chap had sold her back to him as she was too slow. Here she is at her breeder's place, she's on the far left, her dam is on the far right

I shouldn't have bought her because I knew that "too slow" probably meant "difficult" and also at the time she was in foal. But I did, but obviously couldn't really get started until little Merlin put in an appearance in 2008. I just missed him being born, when I got there she still hadn't expelled the afterbirth and he was still a bit wet, but already on his feet:

He was a lovely little chap, but as he was by an Arab stallion I knew he probably wouldn't be chunky enough for me in the future so he was sold to the owner of the place they were at livery at the time. I got to help with his first few weeks and months though, it was a fantastic experience.......

Anyway, after he was weaned and Freya came home, the real fun started. I had already had a few issues with her to iron out, she had learned for instance that swinging her impressively large posterior at people usually got them to move out of her way and stopped them making her do stuff she didn't want to do. Like having fly spray/masks on and suchlike. But it didn't take her long to realise that I wouldn't be intimidated by her and she got used to these things. Turned out that there were a load more things she objected to once she came home though. Like wearing a saddle and going out into the big scarey wide world.......

It was like having a newly backed youngster. She spooked at everything, she didn't like dogs, cars, tractors, white lines on the road, level crossings, bicycles, speed bumps and babies. This last one was overcome fairly quickly as the SNO was tiny at the time! The first time we cantered, on the first hack I did with Ali, she had a serious go at bucking me off. She didn't manage it though.......I realised that "too slow" for hunting probably meant "left him eating dirt".......

But I continued to hack her out when I could. And sometimes she was great.....

.....but her shenanigans were worrying Ali,although Gandalf never attempted to copy her, and as I didn't have the time to devote to her training having had the SNO, I reluctantly sold her (to the people who had bought Merlin, as it turned out). She was a real character and I miss her......

And she taught me a lot, and it stood me in good stead for dealing with another mare with attitude and certain ideas of her own in the future.......

Plastic bags......

As it was pretty soggy this weekend, instead of riding we did some bag-on-a-stick practise. Something I do with all of my horses.......

Hollie's little Polo is very nervous of sticks and unusual things in general (he was terrified of the measuring stick the other week) so I showed her some stuff to do with him. He was prepared to sniff it but it wasn't allowed to get out of his field of binocular vision at first......

But we kept at it, kept it on his side until he stopped moving and immediately removed it when he did. He finally realised it wasn't going to hurt him, but he was actually trembling to start with......

Ebony was having a good look at all this going on so I flicked it at her and......she tried to eat it!! Ruby not so keen....but nowhere near as scared as Polo.

The ultimate test though was Sorcier who can't cope with any sort of crop or whip anywhere near him, so I ignored him and played with it with Kinna and becasue she didn't run away from it he decided not to take to the hills in his usual fashion and after a while even went as far as sniffing it!

That was enough for one day as far as he was concerned though, it wasn't allowed to move towards him at all!!!

So he wandered off, all the while keeping an ear on the scarey bag.....while Kinna kept hoping it would suddenly contain some carrots!

Quite unbelievable trip to the vet....

Our rescue ponies, Ruby and Ebony, needed a trip to the vet yesterday, Ebony has an abscess in her foot, the vet came out on Monday to see it and gave us poultices to put on and said to bring her up to him for a check up in a few days. We took Ruby too as she's developed a lump on her neck and we wanted to get it checked out.

So the girls loaded fine and off we went. When we arrived they were a bit on edge, not knowing where they were. The vet started with Ruby, he got the clippers out to remove the hair from around the lump, she wasn't happy about them being anywhere near her. So he shouted at her, not a good start, then decided she'd need sedating. He gave her enough sedative to make her seriously wobbly, then insisted we drag her across to the ultrasound machine to check out the lump which is also an abscess.

Then he turned his attention to Ebony's foot and has basically butchered it looking for this abscess:

When I asked if this was really necessary, he was quite rude! This is the same vet we took Gandalf to about his lump and there were no problems at all and he was very charming and handled him competently. Yesterday it was like he was a different person...... By the time he'd finished with Ebony's foot, Ruby was able to walk more normally but was still obviously under the effects of the sedative. We were a bit concerned about loading her, and were taking it slowly, understandably she was hesitant about going up the ramp in her wobbly state. Next thing we know, the vet has reappeared and after making some condescending comment about English trailers being no good and we should have bought a Fautras, proceeded to fetch a broom and start waving it about behind her. As if this wasn't bad enough he hit her with it, we really couldn't believe our eyes!!

So that is the last time we'll be using that vet, some much for trusting so called professionals........!!

His name is Laurent Duhard, he is in 24700 Ménesplet, avoid him like the plague!

Aliénor's equine story so far......

I was watching Aliénor ride today and thinking how good she looked, she certainly rides better than I did at eleven, indeed some would say better than I do now. So I decided to do the proud mother thing and look out some photos that chart her equine progress.......I really wish there were some photos of me riding as a child, but my father used to abandon me at the stables gate without ever hanging around to watch.

As we bought our first digital camera just before Ali was born (which was about 4 times the size and weight of my current one, and could store a fraction of the number of photos, I still have it somewhere), she will have no such regrets. So here we go......

This is the first ever time she sat on a pony, aged 1:

We didn't have equines in those days, still lived in the UK. This was on holiday in October 2001.

A year later, she was very taken with this Shire at Northcote Heavy Horse Centre in Lincolnshire, she was happily leading him around!

By this time we had moved to France, and had a little bit of land, so the mother in law very helpfully bought Aliénor a pony......a two year old Shetland filly called Milka, who was trouble from day one.
Looks cute, doesn't she?

Well she wasn't. She thought she should be in charge. She was jealous of anyone that took my attention away from her (including poor Ali). She would rear and charge at anyone who went into her paddock apart from me. When I got Gandalf, she bullied him unmercifully. But she taught me a LOT!
And she was Ali's first pony......

Ali & Milka Nov 2004

However, even after I'd backed her it became obvious she could never be trusted off the lead rein so eventually we swapped her with a bloke from the circus for a 12 year old entire called Flecha. Who was ace. He was calm, friendly, once he'd got to know us he would let Ali do pretty much anything with him and we had a lot of fun.....

Ali & Flecha, May 2006

By this time, at the ripe old age of six, the girl was convinced she could ride the big boy.......and she could!!

She came off him once at that age and remains the only person to have fallen off Gandalf......to date.

She grows like a weed and was soon too big for Flecha so I found him a nice home with some people in the Charente who needed a companion for their Shetland (once he'd been gelded). By this time, I had bought another horse, a Percheron x Anglo Arab called Freya and Ali and I started riding out together. The first hack we did is something I'll never forget (not least because Freya tried to buck me off)

September 2008

Sadly I had to sell Freya, because she needed a lot of work and I didn't have the time, due to the arrival of the SNO the year before. So we went back to sharing Big G and I decided to get a baby horse so I wouldn't be inheriting someone else's mistakes again. When Skyfaxa arrived as a 6 month old foal, Ali helped me with her right from the start.

November 2009

And then a few months later I saw Kinna, and she looked so sad I had to bring her home, so Ali's future horse arrived.

February 2010

At this point I thought we had the full contingent of equines, but as it happened, I was wrong, in April last year the Naughty Nordic Princess arrived, and the rest, as they say, is history......

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!

Equestrian Social Media Awards

Ever heard of them? Me neither, until just before Christmas when nominations opened, so of course I nominated our forum, Horsetales. Seein' as it's me who does our Twitter feed and Facebook page........And guess what, I have just discovered that we are a finalist in category 22, South West Europe. So please vote for us here. Lots of other great horsey sites/people/blogs to vote for too........including Haynet (see link, right).