A horribly soggy day but one that could not be abandoned since my clients had come over from Luxembourg for their training day .Even the ponies out on the Forest were getting extra rations down at Red Shoot.
It's been a year since Chris and Kerry last came. We got lots covered last time and it was great to see how much they had remembered and honed since I saw them. Their own Exmoor ponies are benefiting from that too.
From groundwork to desensitisation techniques. It's also been a while since Theoden and Petra have been round the agility course but they had forgotten nothing either - this flies in the face of all those people who suggest that there are no benefits to desensitisation.
We were soon onto advanced class with Bella accepting a needle-less syringe in exchange for clickered treats. It has only been a few weeks since she was last injected for real. Using clickered treats for 'mock' injections can set a horse up to accept the real thing without a murmur.
My pub parasol impression made me look like a mad cocktail stick but calm handlers meant calm horses.
Time for another wipe of the camera lens as the rain continued to drench us...
Sometimes we got the impression that there were more than five of us in this relationship...
but Henry has started to earn her keep...especially when it is raining so hard that we needed to take shelter in the barn.
Last session for today, long reining around the Forest. Swapping horses in the middle of the session, Kerry and Chris also took the horses off for a tour on their own.
Just a little brighter and time for a tour of the Forest starting with the Arboretum...
deer at New Park...
...and Beaulieu Road Sales Yard.
Finally we spotted the early foal again.
