Well here we are in Paris just having a glass of wine to recover from the Paris Marathon today, Mike had to
run it obviously but the kids and I spent the whole time rushing up and down
steps to Metro stations, standing in overcrowded trains and then on freezing
cold and windy streets waiting for him to put in an apperance! He now has no
reason to complain about hanging around at the next TREC or SJ comp we
do........
Things I have to change before doing it all again in London next week: wear
shoes more comfortable than jodhpur boots for yomping around a city, get Mike to
dye his hair pink or something so he's easier to spot, and if humanely possible
leave the SNO behind!!!
Mike is in pretty good shape, considering, having followed the advice in the official guide to the letter (think they might need to use a proper translation service next time):
The small bandages for his tits worked well so I didn't
get the complaining about jogger's nipple this time (got no sympathy from me
anyway, I remember breastfeeding)
A week to recover, then off to do it all again in London. Still time to sponsor us here.
Rode the boy down to Tanya's today as we're off to Paris then London to watch the other half run marathons so he's going to have a couple of weeks off from the bullying girlies and can chill out with Ches and Polo without getting pushed around (as much).
Took Sky along for the exercise, by the end of the ride she'd finally got the message that I wanted her to canter sensibly alongside Gandalf rather than bucking, biting and trying to blat off ahead of him.....
Gandalf was full of beans and did an average of 7.8 km/h, trotting and cantering the whole way. Not sure if that was because he wanted to keep up with Marathon Man or whether he knew he was going to Tanya's where there's lots of grass and no one to annoy him.
Took us ages to cross the main road in the village, the horses were both very patiently waiting to cross and ignoring all the large lorries rattling past when a bloke in a car parked (in the way) on the pavement called Mike over and told him horses had no business being near such a busy road! Tant pis, monsieur.......
Then we walked back with Sky on her own, along the main road with its big rattly lorries and she didn't worry about them at all. Kept trying to deafen us neighing for the others though.......
The girls will be going into my neighbour's paddock tonight which has lots of grass, so they'll be happy........
Went for a nice Bank Holiday ride on Monday. Ali and I rode up to Jane's in Bonneville, then swapped our two mounts for Ocarina and Maverick. Ali put him through his jumping paces again, he seems to quite enjoy it....
...and I did some more of the bending stuff with Ocarina. She's very stiff on the left rein and leans in like a motorbike, I've been trying to get her to stop leaning in and flex better.....
There were some nice soft moments but she's very resistant to the hand sometimes and tense through her neck
She's also in a hurry all the time so we did some standing still and doing nothing practise and I worked on slowing her down every time she rushed.
Jane wants me to come and work with her regularly, might have to find time to do that......
Been practising this, another challenge on Horsetales, this one just for the under 16s. It involves an egg and spoon and some one handed riding, which proved tricky in practise........
Where's the egg?
....but the girls got there in the end!
Here's Éowyn's on the lead rein (Gandalf was a bit plein d'haricots)
And Ali's entry for the non lead rein kids
Great fun, hopefully this will be a regular thing.
Exercised 4 horses today on 2 hacks. Took G and Sky out this morning, and Sky
was a total hooligan, prancing, snorting, exploding whenever we tried to canter,
wish I had a helmet cam, she was so funny........
Then
this afternoon I took Ches and Kinna out, wanted to check out a ride I'd meant
to do a while back but forgot the map last time, this time I remembered it and
we did a lot of new tracks and ended up doing 12kms. Kinna kept trying to stop
dead and eat grass, when this didn't have the desired effect, she kept trying to
get in front of Ches and bite him. Still, we had a nice ride on the whole.......here's another map
Was just talking to Ali about when I learnt to ride and it got me thinking. Remember when you were learning to ride and your instructor told you all theses things, like always lead from the left with the lead line in both hands
never let a rope drag on the floor
always keep your hands down and together
Always mount from the left
A lot of it is sound safety stuff that was drilled into us, but experience has changed what I do. A lot....
Now my rules are things like never start something you don't have time to finish, always reward for the smallest try and be firm, consistent and calm no matter what happens.
Although very occasionally I really do have to mount from the left ;)
