23rd August, 2013 All Things Bright and Beautiful

I've been looking forward to this morning's appointment for a while. Tia is a four year old PRE (Andalusian) born in, wait for it, Leicestershire. I was asked to assess her for starting and to make a start on any training that she needs. She's a beautiful horse and, like all of her breed, very bright. We started with some groundwork, asking her to lead quietly down (and up) the field, did a bit of work on asking her to accept fly spray and finished with me leaning over her to see what she would think. She was fine.

"Goodness! What a lot I got! [Horse report,  notes and photos] I haven't had time to go through all that but have saved them all to disk and will peruse later - many thanks Sarah for an amazing day yesterday.  I took Tia out last night and put in a couple of stops on the way - she had to be backed up one stride the first time and was perfect the second. Result!" JL

Update received 17th September, 2013: "Tia is a reformed character – I have been going round telling everyone how brilliant you are.  I haven’t got the chance to do that much with her but every time I lead her in or out we do different speeds and put in a stop or two – except when it’s pouring with rain she’s very good – then it’s a case of “stop faffing around and let me get inside!”

We have been down the field again a time or two and she was very good – we walked in and out of some poles on the ground and did a Strictly back up the hill – slow, slow, quick, quick, slow – she’s been super.  We’ve also been down the track a time or few and just worked on down about an extra 100 yards or so each time.  The balloon has not stretched much, so never even close to bursting, and she is now walking with me much more confidently as I am walking much more confidently with her." JL

After a fortnight's gap we did some more work with Oscar and the motorbike. This time he was calm enough for some ridden work but we are having to be fairly cautious as he is still pretty worried about the bike - it only takes one incident for a horse to become super-sensitised to something out on the roads. If only drivers understood that.

Came home to this splendid card...