8th December, 2008 Foals en France - Distance Learning

I was recently contacted by a lady now living in France who has recently imported two semi-feral New Forest ponies. Although I was quite prepared to travel over to help, I sent my notes over in the first instance to see whether she could train them by remote control! All has been going well and both have made good progress. This was the raison d'etre behind writing a book on the subject and I have almost finished it save for a few stories about individual ponies - I hope to include Freddie, Clio, Billy Milton, Rowan, Dunnock and Magnum.

Hi Sarah,

just a quick update on Sugar and Treacle for you. They are both doing really well, Sugar responded quickly to the clicker training and seems to understand what it's all about. She's developing some real trust now and is beginning to come over to me when she's in the field just to say hello which would never have happened before! She even lifts her head and whinnies to me when I come out to the field now so things are getting better. Treacle is as nosey as ever, she's now wearing a headcollar quite happily but we still need to do some work on being lead as she's a bit of a primadonna but certainly not scared! I also managed to get a wormer down them with relatively little fuss which I was very surprised with- I think they just classed it as extra food as it was going in their mouth! It got washed down with lots of apples so I hope it wasn't too traumatic an experience. The farrier came last Saturday and managed to trim and rasp her front feet, thank goodness. He's a tiny little chap, the size of a small flat race jockey but I think that was in his favour as she seemed less stressed than I thought she might be so it's been quite a positive couple of weeks over here.

This is all thanks to you Sarah, your kind advice has been invaluable to us and I will keep you up to date as we still have a long way to go! When is your book being published? Please let me know as I definitely want to buy it and would love to meet you too if we get the chance!

With much love and gratitude,

Nikki and Sugar
xxxx

PS and me, and me, and me, and me : TWEEKAL.XXXXXX