Trail rides!

this past week has definately been about trail riding!

With Paris' fetlock related lameness i have been playing it safe and building up his strength with straightlines on trail rides. last week i had some really good walk halt back up transitions so my challenge to myself this week was to add some trot. Elvira went away for a few days so i also decided to have a go at "ponying" her 12.2 hh pony, Indy. usually people would practice this in the arena first but as I am not allowing Paris to do any circles i decided to give it my best shot straight on a trail ride! my first challenge was to get the two horses to the student stables - Indy is in the student herd where as Paris is in the gelding herd. I went to Paris first and put his hoof boots on and then led him up to the student forest. I tied Paris to a tree, worrying how he would be, picked up Indy's halter and headed into the student horse pasture. At first Indy wasn't sure about coming to me, but i imitated Elvira's way of calling her and used the "draw". she soon decided to come and i haltered her and led her back to Paris just in time - he was just starting to get a panick on and had wraped an extra coil around the tree but when he saw me he stopped, calmed down and waited for me.

i tied Indy in the student stables and tacked Paris up (I miss our pre-ride warm up but it's only temporary) and then lead the pair of them to a log. i held Indy's rope as i mounted Paris and then managed to drop it! with a couple of attempts i managed to use my carrot stick to lift her rope off of the log and then position her next to Paris. the first thing she did was walk behind Paris and he felt her rope and yeilded very quickly in a hind end disengagment. he was pulling faces and being bossy toward Indy so i started asking him to back up. as i did i asked indy to do the same, sometimes using my carrot stick to wiggle her lead rope closer to her head. as we moved off Indy would try to lag behind and eat grass - i popped her on the bottom and she would shoot forward and then i used the carrot stick to shake her lead rope if she went too far forward. soon Indy found the sweet spot at Paris' side and was putting effort in to staying there and i could do walk halt backup transitions with the pair of them. we walked up the road, then around the Scout and Canter Departure fields. Sanne was riding Tasja who got rather worked up and was soon doing circles around us in working trot. Jo France was following us on Bertie who she was riding in the bareback pad. he kept stopping to eat grass and then rushing to catch up with everyone and even gave her a couple of canters. Indy was so left brained and Paris was coping really well until i gave them a grazing break to allow Sanne more time to calm Tasja down before we left the field. Paris started pawing and getting very impatient and made it clear that he is inately an extrovert! I headed back home with Jo France and Sanne went for a longer ride around the woods to get Tasja to be more left brained. I was very pleased with how quickly Paris had adapted to leading another horse and had accepted that a lot of what i was doing had no meaning for him. a couple of days later i took Paris and Indy out again, this time alone. I was ready to introduce trot to Paris' trail rides and Elvira had mentioned she wanted Indy to trot so I took them back to the big fields where we had space and played a follow the rail at the trot. Paris leapt into a massive endurance trot, with medium trot strides far too big for little Indy to match so she hopped into canter and stuck beside us, looking at us with what i can only describe as a pony grin! she absolutely loved it. at one point Paris took a couple of canter strides that were no faster than his trot. i asked him back and kept him doing laps of the field with a view to having him find a more comfortable, steadier and calmer trot. unfortunately my plan was brought to a halt twice, firstly because my stirrup fell off and i had to dismount, fix it and re-mount (not easy when you have two horses trying to eat grass) and secondly because one of his hoof boots came loose and was flapping about. again i had to dismount, fix things and re-mount. i then took the pair of them back home via the long route passing the student horse pasture so that they had time to cool down after all their exercise.  Since then Elvira has returned and has been practicing ponying Indy from Bertie. I have been trying to help Paris find a calmer trot on a loose rein on the trail rides - it's amazing how much more forward he is out of the arena. i am finding it tricky to be really strong in my seat, and to keep my steady rythm and have him match me. it is so easy to slip into matching his increasingly fast and irratic pace. we are getting much better and i can feel all my muscles where i am really using myself! yesterday our trot on the trail ride was much improved. as we rode across the last farm fields on the way back to the arena i felt his mind go home as it always does. i was doing walk halt back up transitions (we had been doing trot halt back ups in the forest!) but he was feeling sluggish and reluctant in the backuop and then springing off into the walk as soon as i he felt me think about moving on. he was still at least a 6 on the impulsion scale so I had the idea to turn him around and back him up all the way home. my thoughts were that he would find a reason to backing up and get him really thinking of going backward rather than forward - tricky for a forward-aholic. i was very strict in only asking for the back up when he was not backing up - back up is a gait and i want him to learn his responsibility to maintain it as he does the walk trot and canter. i thought about how in riding we keep whatever gait we are doing in our body and felt a massive improvement when i was backing up in my body. he was starting to give me more and more strides of back up but it took us at least 100m of back up before he suddenly got it and gave me several massive purposeful strides of back up. i halted in my body ready to spring off and reward the change in his thinking but he went crooked and started to turn so i straightened him and asked for the back up again. he gave me the massive backup again and this time stayed straight as i halted and leapt off. we then turned for home and i gave him his dinner. i'm really looking forward to seeing if this makes any alteration in his back up - i may have to do it more but it really made me think how sometimes we just don't do things for long enough.

tomorrow we are planning to do the ride to the lakeside restaurant that we never got to do!

Riva - my poor baby has been lame and so i have mainly been concentrating on trying to clear up her mudfever. yesterday i checked her trot and she seems quite a bit better - the heat and swelling in her fetlock has gone. her mudfever just does not seem to be getting any better!

Touria - in many ways although being my youngest and greenest horse is my main squeeze as she is the only one i can play with and ride! she has been getting very confident. last week we had our first ever canters which were so cool so at the start of this week Gabi took up to the fields. Touria had been very slow when i first started riding her but we found when she gets to e in the lead she really has a forward going pace and the others had a job to keep up with her endurance trot. Gabi had the idea of putting her in the lead and asking for canter on the field to see if she would take it better. i could feel her really enjoying herself on the field and i took the lead and as we rounded the bottom corner of the field to head back up the hill i asked for canter - what i got were thirty strides of bucking and broking! at one point both my stirrups were gone and i was sent high in the air but i managed to keep my balance straight keep her between my legs and keep asking her forward until she stopped bucking. It was the most incredible rodeo experience i have ever had! I just couldn't help but be impressed with myself that i hadn't fallen off! after that everytime Salvia, her herd mate, came near Touria would pin her ears and try kicking, to which Salvia turned to kick back! In the herd Touria is the omega, she is kept at the back by all the other horses. it is interesting to see how the confidence of having a human on her back and going in front of the others has triggered her to challenge her position in the herd! it is also very obvious that she was not respecting my leadership and was having a whale of a time playing as if i was not even there! on the way home she was thinking of getting to the grass and passed the horsebox so close she crushed my leg against it. i had seen it coming but had no steering at that point! so the next day i had a short online session with her in which i took her into the round pen with the 45ft line. i wanted her to maintain canter without bucking and figured that in the round pen on such a long line we would not need to worry about her also keeping slack in the line which we are still playing with. i played a game of tagging the spots where she stopped and then i would change direction everytime she broke gait. she gave me a fantastic 2 and half laps of forward canter on the left rein. i decided to reward that and make a mental note to look for the same on the right rein the next day.  so the next day we went back in the round pen and i asked her for sideways all the way around. i wanted to make sure i kept her mind and didn't turn the round pen into the place where she just mindlessly runs in circles. I would ask her to back up and she kept making the assumption we were circling and turn to the left so i would disengage her hindquarters, send her sideways from zone one, back her out straight and leave her to lick and chew. soon i had her attention and i could actually send her back and then on a circle to the right. she is so smart, she remembered a game Gabi had played with her weeks ago where she would canter and then halt at specific points in the pen. i marvelled at her intelligence and remained passivley persistent in the rules of our new game and soon she got it - she gave me four laps of canter on both reins without bucking and then i knew we were ready to mount and ride. as i mounted she was a lot less fidgetty at the block and didn't try moving off when i mounted so i knew i had earned some respect. i checked out my lateral flexion, then i asked for a nine step back up and got the best one i had ever got form her! i then took the plunge and checked out my steering... AND WE HAD STEERING! we were doing figure eights at the walk! I had a brilliant trail ride, we all took turns to take the lead and Touria was much more calm and listening to me ven on the big field where she had done her rodeo on the previous ride. we didn't ask for canter but i could feel we were on the right track for improvment. as we were trotting through the forest Touria had a moment where she lost her footing on a small log she then stumbled over a bigger log which was actually a small tree and the branches shook which spooked her and she span 90 degrees and leapt into the bushes - i barely stayed on! it was so fast! apart from that she was very left brained.

I got to play with Sesame last week. he is one of the five year old youngsters. he is an LBE and so big he has trouble coordinating his legs, loses confidence and charges off like a steam train. i was advised to play with him on a 45ft line and use gloves - and i'm glad i did! he is a real sweetie but very powerful and can react extremely quickly! at one point i thought he was going to jump out of the arena (which he has apparantly done before!) but I found that if i was really soft in my phases he could handle it and he gave me some nice canter departures. Marie-Claire complimented me on how i played with him and said it was a pleasure to watch!

the other day i had been helping Thomas and Anna mark out the points in the field for the Honeycomb we want to build. once we were done i went to get Touria for the trail ride. i spotted a horse with black legs and white in the tail standing by Sesame and Sirius, Touria's friends. this horse was not looking at me but has a few bite marks and a messy mane that was half on one side and half on the other. i pretended not to be interested and then the horse turned to me and i rubbed the halter on it's head and slipped it on and was just asking it to turn it's head more toward me when Thoma and Anna turned up and asked me who i was haltering. i replied "Touria!" and looked and realised i was haltering Seth! Seth has the tiniest little piece of white where a star should be whereas Touria has a massice white blaze with two bits that stick out makin it look like a "T"! I rubbed Seth and took the halter off, Sanne had already collected Touria for me! I felt like such a wally that i had not even recognised my own project horse! After i had surviced the Touria rodeo Gabi made a half joke that i could ride bucking horses and maybe i would have Seth as he can be very explosive! not sure how i feel about it but as i walked away and looked back at Seth he was yawning and i felt there was some connection... who knows!

Sanne and Joke have both gone home now. it is just me, Elvira and Anna in the house. Next week we may have some American missionaries visiting us from Elvira's church. it should be really interesting! we also plan to invite Marie-Claire's husband, Peit, to dinner to discuss our ideas for a honeycomb at the Plessis! and then of course we have tomorrow's restaurant ride!