Had a go at horse logging.....

Went on a horse logging course today, was great, but I am knackered tonight!! The site was on the side of a hill, so much walking up and down.....
The lady running the course was Kate from Rowan Working Horses, have seen her before at one of the local agricultural shows, more about her here

She has two Ardennes horses, Kip and Sol. They make Tari look slim and delicate ;-)  First we had a demo on how to tack up, then we were out in a field to do some long reining, I found that bit easy as I've done so much with the girls, some of the others didn't though!

Then we went up into the woods to start work. Suddenly when you've got lots of tree stumps and whippy bits of hazel everywhere plus a metal swingletree attached to the back of the horse dragging along the ground, long reining becomes more of a challenge!!

But I soon got the hang of it and Kip and I dragged some logs up the hill. He put on a fair old turn of speed, knowing how much effort he needs to get the logs up there, but he also had very good brakes

After lunch, we did some stuff with the timber arch, a wheeled contraption that the horse pulls along with row of ratchets to hoist one end of the wood up so it's easier to clear rough ground. This really needed some thinking about, but was generally a pretty good off road vehicle

I was impressed with the horses' manoeuvrability, they could do some neat lateral moves when they needed to And they had lovely natures, but then, that's what you'd expect from a draft breed.

Pics courtesy of Ali who came along and wants to do a course herself next time :-)

Oh, Sky......

OK, well I spoke too soon about the boot camp. After a couple of weeks off due to a frozen sand school and some snow, Sky went back for a lesson and was a total git.

 

She didn't want to go and do some work as there were some interesting looking geldings on the bottom yard (yes, she's coming into season) and she wanted to go and talk to them.

She remembered her incredible stop and refuse to go forward technique that we thought she'd given up.

Ali got a bit of a workout, and Sky eventually got the message when Sarah reached for the lunge whip. So in the end, she did do some work. Having expended far more energy attempting to avoid doing any work than she would have needed to simply do as she as asked. Ho hum......

 

Boot camp seems to be going well......

Sky has been going for her lessons as regularly as possible (when I've not been ill, Ali hasn't ben ill, or it hasn't been snowing) and she's been making good progress. I took the camera along the other day, as the sun was out and most of the mud was scraped off, and watched a bit of the lesson. She seems to be a lot happier in the school, the napping has disappeared and the only problem now is her lack of fitness, she was tired by the end....

Some pictures:

Canter transitions on the right rein are still a problem, Ali was having to really concentrate ;-)

Maybe our baby is finally growing up....?

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!

Boot camp

Ali's been a bit frustrated recently at the lack of opportunity or venue to do any work with Sky, and Sky has been a contrary little git about going forwards out hacking, so I decided to try something different today. Found this place via a group on FB and it's only half an hour's hack from us, in fact we've ridden past the road down to it many a time, didn't know it was there.....

Annoyingly, as the crow flies, it's 5 minutes away, but someone very inconsiderately put the M5 between it and our yard....

Anyway, Sky was her predictable nappy self on the way there (I followed in the car) and got very excited when she saw another horse on its way back ahead of her, so by the time we arrived she was all hot and bothered. I had warned the instructor, Sarah, what she can be like......but she was cool and just said take her in the school and we'll see what happens.

Sky pranced off snorting and neighing but settled quite quickly - and as soon as she realised she was having to do some work, she resorted to trying to stop and nap to the gate, then to the barn at the far end where some other horses were......this is, according to Sarah, because her basic schooling isn't in place and she doesn't unquestioningly go off the rider's leg. So the rest of the session was spent concentrating on not letting her get away with any stopping and in the end she kinda got the message.

 

Sarah recommended we take a dressage whip out and use it to reinforce the leg aid if she doesn't listen. She also immediately asked why she wasn't ridden in a bit......

So am I being to "fluffy" with Sky? Should she have done more lunging as a youngster (another recommendation)? I don't know. What I DO know is that Ali really enjoyed the lesson, got a lot out of it and wants to go back next week, so that's what we'll do.

Your Horse Live

Now we're in the UK, many events we never used to be able to get to are now merely a wait in a motorway traffic queue away......yesterday we decided to make the trip up the M5 to Your Horse Live. Quite a good day out, but not the best event I've been to all year.....

Took us half an hour to get into the car park, which was a muddy field at 10 am and by the time we came to leave, they'd had to get some tractors out on standby to drag cars out, luckily we were very near the hard track so managed to get out unaided (my old car would have needed help from a tractor )

Once inside, I couldn't believe just how much shopping there was, more even than at Olympia.......We had a job fighting our way through the crowds oohing and aahing over the sparkly browbands and embroidered jackets to actually get to an arena. At one point we nearly walked into Charlotte Dujardin wearing a huge furry headband thing......

The smaller arena was good, you didn't have to queue for ages like for the main arena. We saw Jason Webb in action, I like him, have seen his bridleless riding vids online before. He did a demo on his horse Diesel and they clearly have a great relationship. He was bridleless, guiding him with his seat and a long whip for showing direction and he was refreshingly honest about this being a work in progress and what had worked well at home wasn't working so well in front of a crowd elsewhere (as the horse charged round the arena without listening to him at first) but he stuck with it and got there in the end.

Ali really liked him so went to get his autograph afterwards

We listened to a few people in the equine Learning Zone, there was a Q&A session with Carl Hester, Jason Webb, Paul Tapner & Ben Hobday...

Outside they had the Rescue Village, with all the charities bringing some inmates along, and Hovis, of Horse and Hound fame, was there, looking very fed up with being shut in a stable and kicking the door to bits....

Then we went to queue up for the main arena to watch Paul Tapner in action. He did a quick masterclass on riding cross country fences.....

But most importantly, we saw the guys from the Centre of Horseback Combat again, and I treated myself and Ali to an early Christmas present :-)

Don't know if we'll go to YHL again though, as I said, too much shopping and not enough horses for my liking........

Horse archery championships

Last weekend saw Ali and I climbing blearily into a car full of camping equipment at 6 am. After our nice welcome at the European archery competition a couple of weeks ago, we decided to go along to the British Horseback Archery Association's annual championships. A flurry of emails and phone calls during the week testifying to her ability to stay on a horse had secured Ali a place in the competition.

We had also arranged to pick up a total stranger and fellow HBA enthusiast from Bristol on the way. Susie turned out to be very nice and coincidentally to share some of our fluffier views on such things as bitting and shoeing horses, so the journey passed quickly....

On arrival at the Centre of Horseback Combat, it was raining, so we steeled ourselves to go and stand in a soggy field for the day. We could at least huddle damply under the judge's tent, unlike the people taking part, who got very, very wet.....

Still, by the time it got to Ali's first event, something called the Australian Triple, the rain stopped and the sun even came out, so she managed to stay relatively dry. She got handed her mount, one of only two who can deal with left-handed archers, a nice boy called Jupiter.....

This event turned out to be a lot like the club 2 competition in France, you can carry your arrows in the hand and start with one nocked on the string. She managed to get one in a target, probably should have saved the victory dance until after she'd finished the run though..... ;-) There were 3 targets per run, the first and last angled so the last one was a back shot, that'll need some practise!

Anyway, she actually came fourth, and was very happy to get a rosette :-)


The next event, for the more experienced archers, was something called the Mamluk, which involved doing a long shot, a forward shot,  a Jarmaki, which is a target flat on the ground, a back shot and an offside shot. Great one to photograph!

After that, it was back to the car to extract the aforementioned camping gear and set up camp. As the sun went down, so did the temperature, so we took the only prudent course of action and retired to the pub for a few fortifying pints and some nice hot grub.

The next day dawned chilly, with frost on the ground (and in Ali's hair!) but at least it wasn't raining. That day's event was the Korean competition which everyone did. The main problem here for Ali was that for 4 of the 6 runs you can't start with an arrow nocked, so there are many photos of her doing this....!

So the best we can say about the Korean event is that she got a rosette for taking part.... ;-)

A fun weekend, met some great new people, and a lot of them are Firefly fans as it turns out, so they can't be all bad.....looking forward to the next event. Need to get some serious practise beforehand though ;-)