Weekend plans?

Great start to the weekend - Katie and Dolly went to a training SJ competition - very small scale but at least it's something vaguely competitive! Entered the 75 and 85cm classes and won both with fast clears. Dolly seemed to love it! She was on fab form.

Toby is mainly hacking at the moment which I am even beginning to quite enjoy....
 
Fab fun this morn xc schooling! OH took the reins, though I hopped on at the end to have a quick pop over a couple of jumps.

The big horse was an absolute star. He is still a little bit green in water but is improving hugely. Biggest jump of the day (not ridden by me, I hasten to add) was a cottage, measured it and it’s roughly 1m10, I’d be sick if I tried to jump that ?

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Plus a couple of me for good measure:

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He was such a good boy, made it feel relatively easy - he was keen, forward and willing, really lovely to ride ?
 
Is that Redcat Sheep? They put a pic up of their freshly painted house looking very like that.
Supercob has a new Fairfax jump saddle and I just love it. We had a jump lesson this afternoon in it and it feels fab. Jumping went well, played a bit with angles and just improving my riding in to.and out of fences - I'm nowhere near quick enough to pick up and ride for the next and on something who is naturally a bit down hill and towing anyway that just wont do
 
Well I got out n about with my little NF mare! She is now loading like a pro. Her very first trip out! Everything was v new so spent a while walking her round and round the school, then got on in great trepidation...all fine, so rode for about 20 minutes, then hopped off and led her over some poles to finish. She was a star! Then loaded v easily for the return trip. If only she would grow another 3 or 4 hands! She is about 12.2. I am 49 kg, so not too heavy for short bursts but def too tall, even at 5 ft 1...! It was so brilliant to be out n about ?
 

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‘Interesting’ hack today, people have obviously decided that lockdown is over and we saw over 50 cars in the half a mile stretch of road that we took. Some incredibly stupid driving too, guess it’s time to dig out the hat cam again.
Also Mad spooked not long after we’d left the yard and the jarring has trapped a nerve in my neck/shoulder and I can’t look left, up, or down ?. Hoping it’ll be sorted in the morning.
 
Oh glad it was an easy fix for him Michen and you can enjoy them both now. I totally think you'll end up keeping Bear just for Bog to play with!
Little clip of us playing dominos yesterday. I've worked out at least one of our issues is that I showjump in the same way as i ride solids and expect him to do the same - he wouldnt need more riding at a solid and hed have picked up for me because its solid, whereas with knock downs hes just like meh :p
And a slightly better one just to prove we can
I took the rein off my gag at the end and actually got a much better round on the snaffle, I think now he doesnt want to bury me after the fences the gag is too strong for me to have enough contact to have him together and bouncy. Unfortunately nobody managed to film that one :(
 
Got a horse ridden, whoo hoo!
Had an afternoon nap yesterday and felt with-it enough to ride both... started with Kira but she was having none of it, the horses outside were charging about thanks to the sodding awful horseflies and she is in season so could not contemplate knuckling down :oops: gave up and abandoned thoughts of riding Darcy.

So up with the larks this morning on Salty duty, headed over to do Darcy after his breakfast had gone down. No flies, no galloping disruptors, just a nice quiet hour to get back into the swing of things. Haven't sat on him since Monday so he put his back right up and was quite jazzy but he did his work without ejecting me so that's a good start :p

Nearly rid of the winter fuzz :cool:

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Yesterday had a good 2 hour hack out with friend, B v good with only the 1 excited bounce (just as I was folding forward under a tree branch, eejit) and cheerfully taking the lead past a lot of flapping red and white tape.

Today we went to our lesson and I did polework with B this morning, so good for getting balance, rhythm and steadiness of paces. She got a little whizzy when we got to raised fan poles on 2 corners as well as the 5 poles on each long side, but once she understood it wasn't jumpies she quickly settled. A full hour and we were both dripping but I was v pleased with how she went ? These one to one sessions have been so good for us both!
 
I schooled Carrot last night and spent the first 10 minutes randomly stopping dead under the shade of the hedge and then shooting out in sideways canter on a snorting, head tossing idiot, which is about as un-Carrot as life comes.

She settled down to work in the middle of the field nicely and tried to keep her mind in the game for 20 minutes of niceish trot work and some reasonably up and rounded canter (no ears up my nose, the general sensation of having a neck in front of you, that sort of thing). I led her down to the hedge when we were done and she pretty much turned herself inside out, so at least I know it wasn't the work she had an issue with. I'm chalking it up to bastard horse flies in the shade. There's running water in the ditch in there too, which is very odd as there's no water anywhere else.

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Lovely walk and trot hack on the now-not-so-new boy, followed by a bath for him yesterday. Day off today and spent the morning starting to pack the house up as we’re moving at the end of the month.
 
You wouldn't think it was possible to mess up a spa day, and yet...

Good: She stood rock steady for mounting and dismounting, with nobody at her head.

That was about the only good...

Just as I'd got one side of her lathered up, the hot water died. For a feral Irish bog cob, she's a bloody diva and declared she could not POSSIBLY be bathed with COLD WATER! I managed to hold her in one place for long enough to at least rinse off the side that had been shampooed, but gave up on washing the other side. Half of her is gleaming in the sun with glowing white, fluffy feather - and the other half is dusty, stained, straggly and a general disgrace.

Okay, I thought, I'll at least neaten up her hog. Of course, it was one of those days, so I took off a lovely big slice of mane, and my trimmers promptly died, leaving her looking like she'd lost a fight with a lawnmower.

I had a go with the clippers, and managed to get the bulk of it off, albeit extremely unevenly because it was done on the move as she ran around me. She doesn't like clippers up round her head. I gave up and used scissors for the forelock!

On the bright side, tail pulling (well, raking) was successful-ish. It doesn't look 100% like a tail, but it looks a lot less like an overgrown bramble bush.

We've got farrier on Tuesday for her to have shoes back on, another lesson on Wednesday, and then saddle fitter on Friday, who'll hopefully have something Blue finds even more comfortable than her bareback pad.
 
Thoroughly enjoyed a day off today. I hadn’t felt well at the end of last week, I’m very aware of my body having a crash and I know I’ve been over doing things. Plus I’ve not really been eating enough, simply because I hadn’t felt too well. By Friday I was not in a good way. Thankfully, forcing myself to eat some proper food and just slowing down a bit I started to feel a bit better. Managed a hack on Millie yesterday evening, then had a lovely day off today (after housework and trip to the shops) and then a hack on Polly this evening. Going to have an early night as I’ve got another 6 days in the salon now.
A between the ears shot from today
 

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Roxylola said:
Shes pretty, Belle or Bella? Do you like "human" type names for horses?
Click to expand...
Bella is her name at the moment! :cool: I prefer more unusual names rather than human names, I already have an Erda and a Luna. I had another Bella on trial a few years ago and know of a few more, want something a little different!
 
Took big horse to the beach last night!
He was initially a bit unsure about the whole thing, but in a way it was a good education because it gave a good insight into how he behaves when he isn’t 100% sure about something. So he was a little bit spooky and tense, but he really tried hard so actually very pleased with him.
He did settle down after a little while and was his usual chilled self.
Needless to say, he is having today off!!!
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Slightly tardy response from me! D’oh!

Rooni has been great. A lovely relaxed schooling session working on the bigger boy stuff like halfpass.

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I love variety as does he, so we had a little jump too which he really enjoyed! Did his first water tray like a pro!

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Finally, we were able to go for a lesson on Saturday. I was really hoping he would let me show him off a bit and we had the best and most productive session ever. I got off him at the end with the biggest grin. Such a dude!

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Then yesterday we went round some local hacking with a friend. He was mega chill and didn’t put a toe out of line, even when a large party joined us. Had group trots and canters and he was absolutely mega!

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And now he’s shattered!!!

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