Andre very kindly let me ride his Warmblood, Domingo one morning. This horse, like Amarosso in the bottom pictures, was imported from Namibia. Both are very very tall! I worked with two horses in the afternoon. The first was Bahati (Lucky) who is half Appaloosa. He was the very first bargey horse that I met in East Africa - a product of a large amount of testosterone and a lack of leadership and consistency. Apparently he is leading the syces a merry dance and he came out rearing. I worked with him and his owner setting up some basic but clear ground rules. Bless Bahati's cotton pink and black willy (!) he got it pretty quickly and seemed a lot more settled straight away. He worked very nicely through all of the groundwork exercises and then led back to the paddock in a much calmer manner.
My last horse towered over me. This horse is very difficult to shoe and doesn't like having his legs handled, indeed he is not very happy about being touched at all. He went completely boggle eyed when I produced my feather duster (ostrich please note) but relaxed a lot as we carried on. By the end he was accepting it all over his body and all four legs and seemed to enjoy being rubbed at the fetlock with it.
