A Sunshine Award :-)

I got nominated for another award :-D  This time a Sunshine Award (more on that here), and that means more questions to answer.

“Here is what the sunshine award means, “bloggers who positively and creatively inspire others in the blogosphere.” Of course all awards have rules for awarding people. Rules below.”

1. First, the nominee must thank the blogger that nominated her and link to her blog.

Thanks, Martine. Her blog is here

 

2. Then, she must answer a list of ten questions and post to her blog.

So here we go:

1. Do you prefer Mares or Geldings?

Mares, definitely. You learn so much more from them.....

2. English or Western?

English I suppose but my hacking style is leaning towards the Western.......

3. Do you prefer “younger” or “older” horses?

 

I have 3 babies so younger!! I find it easier to start with a blank canvas than deal with other people's mistakes......

 

4. Have you ever trained a horse from ground zero?

 

Yup, am on my 3rd (4th if you count Milka, Ali's first Shetland from hell pony, more about her here). Big responsibility, very time consuming, but immensely rewarding :-)

 

5.  Do you prefer riding or ground work?

 

Hard to say, I like them both! I don't think you can truly be a competent rider if you don't do your groundwork.

 

6.  Do you board your horse or keep it at home?

 

I look after them myself but they're on someone else's land, so effectively I am keeping them "at home". For now, anyway......

 

7. Do you do all natural things or commercial stuff?

 

I try to keep them as naturally as possible and let them be horses. No stables, rugs, clipping, shoes. Don't have a lot of spare cash for buying commercial stuff! Can't be doing with "all the gear and no idea" types either......

 

8. All Tacked up or Bareback?

 

Usually all tacked up. Have ridden bareback in a headcollar but a saddle is definitely more comfy for the mileage I do! Usually bitless though and I hate to see horses strapped down with gadgets :-(

 

9. Equestrian model?

 

Not sure I've got one really. I like people who think about things from the horse's point of view and consider working with them rather than imposing our will on them no matter what. People like Ross Jacobs and Mark Rashid. My "virtual" dressage coach Trudi Dempsey is pretty good at this too :-)

 

10. What’s your, one, main goal while being in the horse world?

 

I would love to do a long ride one day. Like all round the coast of the UK, or from the top to the bottom of France. Gotta get the SNO off my hands first though ;-)

 

3. Next she must nominate ten bloggers for the award and let them know.

 

Here's my list:

 

Lionheart horses

Ross Jacobs' Blog

Soul of a Horse

Roosa’s Horsey Life

Effective Horsemanship

Rosie Jones Horses

Little White Horse

The Dressage Curmudgeon

The Fat Pony

Horses under our Skin

 

I enjoy reading all of these blogs. Feel free to accept or ignore the award....

 

4. Finally, the Sunshine Award button must be posted on the blog

 

Although the one Martine made is probably more appropriate for me ;-)

 

 

Rain, rain......

Seems like I haven't done anything with the horses (or this blog) for ages, mainly because we've been over to the UK for the half term holiday (sorting out a few things, some changes on the horizon, more on that another day) and since we got back it has rained and rained......

So this morning as a tiny bit of sun appeared we went to take the girls for a walk. We were supposed to be doing a TREC training day up at the stables this weekend but it's been cancelled due to the ground being so wet :-( But there's no reason we can't do TREC training at home........

Tari first, we went for a wander in the woods with the SNO armed with a bag to collect things.....Tari was a bit curious but not too bothered by the rustling plastic thing

We found some logs to go over and branches to go under, a nice contre-bas and contre-haut - a pile of gravel that she scrambled up and down no problem.....

The stream was nice and full again and in she went, a slight panic at sinking in to the mud at the bottom but she soon figured out it wasn't quicksand (and there were some tasty plants growing in the water)

We took her back to the field and the it was Sky's turn, she was less happy to leave the others but we got her attention away from them long enough to do our little course too

Not at all keen on the water though, but when we did get her in, she splashed and Ali got soaked!

And now it's raining again, hopefully it'll stop at some point so we can get out for a hack this weekend ;-/

SNO and a Shetland

Stayed to watch the SNO's lesson this week as she was feeling hard done by. Usually I drop her off and take Ali to the other stables and stay and watch Ali, since it's a 25km round trip to go from one place to the other. But this week I organised it so Ali had her lesson on another day so we could take some pics of Little Miss Showoff......

She really enjoyed her lesson

...indulged in some unauthorised overtaking.....

...and managed not to fall off at canter (love the concentration on her face!)

I suspect the poor ponies enjoyed it rather less, there was much kicking and pulling going on and some of the kids had even been armed with crops. Had to resist the urge to drag some of the little beasts off the ponies' backs and give them a stern talking to. Which is why I prefer not to watch really. But it's the least worst stables round here (where Ali goes they don't take beginners) and her friends from school go, so she is happy.

 

Will just have to explain to her that if she kicks one of mine like they kick those ponies, she won't stop til the next county......!

Gandalf the.......black?

Last week I was given a great excuse to make more fancy dress costumes, i.e. the announcement that they are organising a Halloween Fun Day up at the stables this weekend :-)

So off I toddled to Mondial Tissus, the (not very) local (and very expensive) fabric shop in Bergerac and spent ages looking for something black I could buy lots of without spending a fortune. Which still turned out to involve spending more money than I would have if I'd  invested in a ready made costume on eBay. But where's the fun in that?

Mucho fabric was required due to Ali's desire to go as one of the Nine, or the Ulairi, the Nazgûl, Ringwraiths, Black Riders, servants of the Dark Lord - otherwise known as them big, black-clad scary buggers that chase the Hobbits in The Fellowship of the Ring.

So armed with many metres of fabric, I set about constructing a costume. This mainly involved making a basic long tunic, adding dangly sleeves and a hood, and then trashing the whole thing to make it look knackered. Easy! Sorted the hood bit by sticking one of Mike's leather hoods from a LARPing costume under it, pilfered a latex sword from the aforementioned LARPing goodies and the job was a good 'un.......

Although there was one teeny problem - the Black Riders (and the clue is in the name) all rode dark coloured horses and as you know, I've got mainly white ones. I did ask Carole up at the stables if we could use her dark bay Trotter but she didn't think he'd be able to cope with the costume......

So I had to draft in good old Gandalf. He was prepared to go over to the dark side for one photoshoot anyway. We did a dress rehearsal a few days ago and got these shots:

I put that last one on Twitter and the nice people at The One Ring.net retweeted it, so now it's had more retweets than anything else I've ever posted. Someone suggested that Shadowfax had changed sides ;-) Maybe I should get some black paint for the party on Saturday.......

Busy old weekend.....

This weekend was the long-awaited forum get together down here. Jane hosted it up in Bonneville as she has a gite for everyone to stay in. The usual suspects all came along, plus some of the girls from oooop north in Brittany. We took Gandalf and Sky along, Tess brought her little Pottock pony, Kyriane, and we had Jane's two, Maverick and Ocarina. But not all in the same place at the same time, as Ocarina hated the girls on sight and they weren't allowed anywhere near "her" man......

So Saturday morning kicked off with two separate hacks going out, the teenagers (Ali & Caitlin) going out for a somewhat rapid ride, followed by me in the car.....

...and the others at a more sedate pace. As the first hack went so quickly, I was able to nip back and catch the others in action too (OK, so a lot of that action was ponies diving for the grass)

The rainy start to the day gave way to a bit of sun after lunch, and after a few more people had arrived we spent the afternoon messing about trying treeless saddles (one of our members is a rep for Trekker saddles) and sitting around eating cake and drinking tea......

Everyone wanted to have a go on Gandalf......

even the SNO!

Saturday night involved a lot of curry and wine.....including this bottle purchased especially for me ;-)

Then on Sunday, after I'd had to be up at half six to send Ali off to her competition with the club, we spent the morning with our EE instructor giving the odd lesson or two.....

 ...but only getting a little bit wet.

Meanwhile, in St Antoine sur l'Isle, Ali had been putting all that soaring practise to good use on Nahiade and came 6th in both of her classes.

Not entirely sure why they felt the need to include a paddling pool under this jump, but she clearly wasn't bothered by it!

Ali was pleased with her performance, chiefly because Nahiade didn't feel the need to go charging off with her as has happened at previous competitions. And also because when Carole, the instructor, rode her (albeit in a higher class), she only managed 8th.....

 

Some rain fell out of the sky that afternoon though, the paddling pool must have been full! Back at the meet up, we hid indoors, then went out for a drive to collect Ali at the club after the comp and were glad we'd decided not to ride the horses home that day.....

 

So the guests offered to ride them back on Monday morning, when it was dull but dry. I followed in the car (again) to show them some of the tracks and got a couple of nice pics

 

 

All the horses were good, although Sky insisted on seeing if she could get her rider to take her eye off the ball long enough to get her head down to the grass. Business as usual, then......

 

We did kinda miss Chester though, as he went to a new home last week :-(

 

So now I'm back to normality with a heap of soggy washing from Sunday and a kitten who clearly felt dreadfully neglected over the weekend desperate to be in my face all the time ;-)

 

I am a leaf on the wind... Watch how I soar

Not me, obviously. Ali has been doing a fair bit of soaring this week. Jumping practise with Nahiade yesterday, ready for another comp on Sunday, she's entered in the 80cm class....

Nahiade has a habit of drifting to one side to get back to her mates quicker so Ali had to address that, and at the same time stopping her from rushing the fence. She's a complicated beastie due to past treatment and it's taken Ali weeks of patience to get to know how to handle her, but she's getting there..... :-)

After the riding lesson, she went to ride Chester as he's not done much recently. He really isn't a complicated beastie, he doesn't see the point of exerting himself when he could be eating some nice grass but when revved up to it he can jump nicely, anything up to 80cms is nae bother.....

But when Ali put it up to the next notch (which is 104cms, strange grading on those plastic jumps) he decided actually that would require some serious effort and thinking about it, he'd really rather not....

But with a bit of encouragement, he actually did it, and left the pole up!

That's the most work he's done for ages.........he's not exactly showjumper material (we got him on a weighbridge recently, at 13.3 hh he weighs 530 kilos, even Gandalf only weighs in at 554!) but I think it does him good to do something different once in a while.

Love him :-)

Fete du Cheval

For once there was a Fete du Cheval local to us, in Ste Foy la Grande, so we toddled off this afternoon in the sunshine. To be honest, having been to a few of these things I was wondering if we'd see some sorry sights, and there were one or two who were looking a bit unhappy.....

These guys were all flinching away from people trying to stroke them, maybe not the best thing to bring them out in public.....

But there were many more nice looking horses, this huge girl is a Percheron belonging to the guy who sold me Gandalf, she must be twice as wide as him!

She was earning her keep doing carriage rides today....

As were some less than impressed looking donkeys!

And for the first time I actually saw some barefoot and bitless people, this Friesian stallion had beautiful feet, not just unshod but properly barefoot with lovely fat frogs on show when he did his party trick

Pretty sure I've seen them out riding before, with no bridle at all,  only a neckstrap. There were a couple of others in rope headcollars too.
My friend Marianne was there with her lovely paintings, handsome chap in the middle of the top row ;-)

And the Ste Foy Poney Club had some artwork on display too, rather liked this one :-)

There is a spectacle on later, but we had to come home as the SNO was having a tantrum at not being allowed to have a  Barbe à Papa, mainly due to buggering off when she should have stayed in the play area and giving Ali and me a hectic 10 minutes looking for her......

 

Never mind, she's back at school tomorrow.......