Getting some exercise

So in an effort to keep my fat old carcass going as long as possible I have signed up for the 5x50 Challenge again this year. This time I am raising money for World Horse Welfare. Day 12 today and I'll be getting out on my bike shortly......

At the same time, Gandalf has had his yearly MOT from the osteopath and his sciatica is flaring up again so he has to go out for exercise in hand and not be ridden. All this takes time, so yesterday I decided to see if I could cheat......and it turns out the old boy is fine about it.

But he needs to trot to keep up, which he's not supposed to do too much of, so Ali and I take it in turns to lead him.

So no riding for me for a while, just cycling and walking. The osteo is coming back next week to give the girls a going over so we'll all be on foot for a while!

Horsewatching.....

Chester has come to stay for a couple of days and my little herd has been disrupted. Kinna, who is at the bottom of the heap, was quick to impress upon him that she is in charge.....

......and Sky wasn't exactly welcoming either!

Then a bit later they had a mad five minutes, much rushing around and bouncing from the girls whilst Ches tried to stay out of the way and Gandalf just stood there waiting for them to get over it......

Got this great shot of Kinns getting it out of her system!

I love it when a plan comes together.....

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 :-)

Equine Massage

Excellent day yesterday, met some new people and got to see my favourite little Arab horsie :-D
Went to an equine massage demo by Megan Webster of Springfield Equus. She started off with a bit about how it all works on the muscles etc and showed us some massage mitts (including the one she referred to as a "porno mitt") then got us to do silly things with our ears

and massage each other, Tamzin seemed to enjoy hers!

Then she showed us how to massage the horse from head to tail, starting with the poll/ears area. Duke, our demo horse (a taller, very much cleaner version of Gandalf), doesn't like having his ears touched

but once she'd put on the mitt, he was happier with it....

She showed us stroking movements (effleurage)

and compression strokes, with hands or scrunched up mitt

and then concussion movements (not to be done on bony areas!)

More on the movements here

An interesting one that I'd never seen before was massaging the muscle down the front of the shoulder, and seeing if you can get your hand in and pull the muscle out slightly, many horses are really tense here and in the neck

Also, an often forgotten area is the coronet band, gentle palpitations here are good for the feet

After the demo, we got to have a go on the horses, I was really surprised by just how cold Duke's lower legs and shod feet were after being so used to my lot feeling warm....

We gave Ras a bit of a go with the mitt, but he was more interested in the mare next door than our ministrations, I suspect......

Megan is coming over to Tanya's on Wednesday to massage Polo and Sorcier, might take G over there for a workup too.....

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......

Jumping and Jappeloup

Interesting day at St Seurin sur l'Isle on Sunday. Not exactly successful, but we had fun anyway......

Nahiade, the big horse from the club that Ali was riding, was fine to load, travelled well, was happy to be hanging around by the trailer, tacked up and in the first collecting ring. Then she went into the main collecting ring with the jumps and after the first one, charged off round and round in circles...... So Ali just sat there and let her get on with it, and got her calmed down and ready to jump some more practise jumps, and eventually she was OK jumping them more like she does back home at the club.

First competition nerves, we thought, then Ali went in to do her round. She jumped the first two fine then shot off round the arena and poor Ali had to really fight to get her under control enough to jump the rest of the course. She got her round, but racked up a score of faults for "refusals" (charging past a jump she was supposed to go over) and time faults. Her instructor, Carole, initially thought it might have been Ali's nerves getting to thet horse, but then she got her calmed back down in the collection ring before the second class and she was cool as a cucumber. But once back in the ring, the same thing happened, it looked to me like she (Nahiade) was really stressing about the whole thing. Ali got eliminated that time for missing 3 jumps.

So Carole decided to jump her herself and did an engagement sur terrain for the Club 2 class.......and exactly the same thing happened, calm as you like in the collecting ring, and tearing round like a demon in the class. So we are a bit stumped by this. I wonder if something bad happened to her during a comp and now she thinks it'll be like that every time? Maybe that's why she was sold off? Or maybe she just got too used to doing speed classes......

If only they could talk........

Still, got some nice pics....

.....even though it was seriously chucking it down all afternoon, this was the collecting ring

St Seurin's claim to fame is that it was the home of Jappeloup, the little French jumping horse that won gold at the Seoul Olympics in 1988. I remember him doing a lot of the same competitions as Milton, one of my faves. As it happens they've just made a film about him (only in French as far as I know) which we went to see the other day.

Here he is in the eighties alongside the late, great Milton

and winning that gold medal

He's buried at St Seurin, we saw his grave and his old stable door plaque

 

And guess what? Pierre Durand, his rider, was actually there giving out the prizes......

Shame Ali didn't win one....... :-/

Kinna likes to keep us on our toes.....

Yesterday, Ali and Kinna parted company for the first time. Once again it was all about the grass.....Ali had gone ahead of us and asked her to canter back so she decided halfway along to stop for a snack. She did a few all four feet off the ground bounces, I caught the start of it on camera:

then the saddle which wasn't girthed up tightly started slipping down her neck so Ali didn't really have a chance.......

Kinns immediately started stuffing her face, totally not bothered by the saddle round her ears, so Ali had to take it all off and resaddle her. We continued our ride, we were going to the vet's to get their annual jabs done without having to pay the call out fee.

They were fine with this, the vet's is on a big roundabout on the main Bordeaux - Bergerac road but the horses are well used to heavy traffic. The locals are somewhat less used to seeing horses apparently, as a fair amount of slowing down and rubbernecking went on, good job there wasn't a pile up! Then the vet came out with the microchip reader, as we needed to get the girls' details verified before they can go on the list to do Club competitions (paperwork, as ever, has to be done if you want to do anything at all in this country). Kinna took one look at that and backed away eyes rolling and snorting. She doesn't like the vet, ever since she was microchipped as a baby, as they don't use a local anaesthetic here and it hurt. In the end I had to read her chip, and the vet had to sneak up on her with the jab whilst I distracted her with an apple......

Gandalf meanwhile had dozed off in the sun and Sky was trying to eat the shrubbery. Left them with Ali whilst I went to pay the (still overinflated) bill and the girls were trying to edge her towards the grass on the edge of the car park.....

But then we got back on to ride home, and Kinns was good as gold all the way back. Maybe she'd had enough fun for one day....  ;-)