1st March, 2015 The Arrivals Lounge

First and last horse of the day, yesterday, was new arrival Tilly who has come in for early starting work. Her owner, Natasha, is coming too as a Work Experience student studying at Sparsholt.I've worked with Tilly on a couple of occasions and been very impressed with what Natasha has achieved with her so jumped at the chance of having Natasha around for a month.

Everything started off well as Tilly settled to eat her hay straight away...

before greeting the boys next door.

However the arrival of the hunt coincided with Jack and Nettles going off  and Tilly became unsettled.

Natasha seemed to be some consolation but even putting Jack in with her didn't calm her down.

There was nothing else for it than to fetch her little 32 year old mate from home...

but I am sure that Jack and Nettles weren't sure what he'd got that they hadn't! No one has told them that size is irrelevant. Work with Tilly commences today...

Poor weather put paid to any hope of Kestrel being ridden last weekend and almost scuppered our session yesterday. We decided that we could brave a bit of wind and drizzle to take him out on foot. He was an absolute dream.

Not only did nothing faze him but he actively wanted to go up to things out of immense curiosity. We like him to meet as many dogs as he can as there are hundreds of dog walkers who set out from Moonhills car park and not all of the dogs are under close control.

He has never met donkeys before and could not resist...

Next on our list was delightful Welsh Cob, Menna, who is the full fat version of my Petra. What a sensible mare she is generally, easy to handle and very polite. However she has become nervous about oncoming traffic on narrow lanes following an incident with a van where she turned her bottom into the road. This reaction seems counter-intuitive but it is that old into-pressure response to something 'pushing' into her space.

We spent a lot of time taxiing along the old airfield perimeter road, at first 'chasing' the car...

but then working on very gentle fly-pasts. Nevertheless there was a lot of standing water and so the truck was quite noisy.

Having worked with her on foot...

we got Jackie on board and invested in some clickered halts before continuing with the session.

Then we are on the 'road' again helping Menna to over come her fear. At first I walked between her and the car and we moved in incremental stages, at first working where there was a wide area to move out of the way...

but then progressing to a narrower, enclosed part of the road with Jackie and Menna on their own. Each time the car went by she walked her into a clickered halt. This had the effect of interrupting her pattern, bringing down her adrenalin, and cheering her up immensely.

Treating her to the right ensured that her head was encouraged to come to the right, engaging her mind to the right where she would both see the car and connect with her rider. It also kept her bottom to the left.

She coped with everything else brilliantly without any apprehension at all. This included the wild ponies running from the path of the hunt...

and the hunt itself.

Tracey was relegated to second photographer today when Jackie's husband went into safari mode to take pictures of Menna, Jackie and me! Someone has been watching too many BBC Wildlife programmes.

The dream team? Not David Attenborough, but close.

Facebook 12.3.15: "Hi Sarah! We've been out in hand doing some road work, couldn't believe my luck to have picked an usually busy day to walk out, we saw everything from an artic lorry to bicycles, sheep to pigs, buggies to cars!  All very calm just need to find a good spot to practice onboard." JR