13th August, 2016 Not Shaken or Stirred

Another quiet, calm, and undramatic loading session, this time with a horse called Bond, in order to rebuild his confidence about being inside his owner's trailer. On the last two occasions that she loaded him he took off through the front door and on the second occasion jumped but failed to clear a fence, injuring himself. This is one of the reasons why I rarely leave the front door of a trailer open when teaching or practicing loading. Today the front door was closed and the front bar in place in order to keep the handler as safe as possible.

As handsome and smart as his namesake, we didn't want him shaken or stirred.

12th August, 2016 Postcard

Just a few weeks ago Nightingale, the Exmoor pony, was re-homed on conservation grazing at Danebury Fort. He looks right at home in his Iron Age fort.

12th August, 2016 Friday Change Over

Another long trip this morning joining the world, his wife, Thule, three children, dog, tent, and whistle-y kettle, on the long, mostly single carriage-way roads through Dorset from one end where the motorways tip everybody off, to the other at the Devon border, punctuated only by farm harvest vehicles and the occasional ambulance with its sirens going. Only one thing you can do, sit and relax and singalong (again) to Paul Simon. At the other end of this parade of cars, I met up with Debbie, and her two cobs, Milly, and four month old Molly.

Molly appears to have a tummy Mohican....

Milly is ready to start a bit of work again and we wanted to know whether she had already been driven and therefore understood how to be long-lined. In short, yes, and she seemed to enjoy it although it can get complicated with a garrulous foal at foot.

Fortunately, Milly is pretty independent most of the time...

Although not frightened of much, both horses had taken offence at some newly arrived pigs, and I was asked whether we could do some work on getting them used to them since any wander up the lane meant going past them.

With the occasional snort from Milly things settled down pretty quickly partly because there was food being offered.

We were then able to take the girls out for a walk along the lane where they met some cyclists and their dog. Unfortunately the riders failed to keep their dog under control when we returned to the farm and could easily have undone a lot of work with the dog chasing around between the horses, and the bicycles, barking its head off and them shouting at the dog.

We finished with another short session of long reining with Milly who proved to be a very good teacher for Debbie.

11th August, 2016 Magic Wandas

After a morning during which I managed to trim one of Henrietta's feet with the spring loaded pincers, it was time to set off for Magic's second course with students Lou and Lorraine (of Bear and Jack fame). At some time earlier today Magic had managed to slide the head collar that she has been wearing for the last three months off her nose. It now became even more imperative that we get the whole thing off.

We had such a pleasant afternoon with Pat, mine and her friend Pat, and her husband, John watching. During a break Magic approached Pat in the field and took a treat from her with five more of us sitting close by.

Having checked that Magic had remembered everything from her last session we took the feather duster work further, touching her pretty much all over her body including under her neck and tummy. We then did more touching work with hands and got part way down her neck as well as all the way along her body. After a longer break I was able to use the feather duster to move the headcollar further down her neck so that I could undo the buckle and take the headcollar off. To finish we did some work with the scarves - using the longer one to start to teach her to lead just a couple of steps.

10th August, 2016 Starting As We Mean to Go On

Brio started off at exactly the same point as we left off last week, thanks to some twice daily practice by his owner. Even better, the tack locker has been removed from the inside of the horsebox allowing him much more room to travel diagonally if he wants to.

The next step was to persuade him to go into the box itself...

...although he would take a couple of steps in, he found it difficult to work out where his body needed to go in order to fit inside...

...I worked on turning him on the grass at the bottom of the ramp before repeating it inside the horsebox.

Knowing that he had leapt off the ramp the last time he was travelled in a lorry the safest thing to do in this instance was to put myself in a safe position and let him work it out for himself...

Although he rushed a little, the panels, set well back from the ramp, encouraged him not to go from the top to the bottom and on his third repeat he did put all four feet onto it.

Back at the fields we were surrounded by New Forest ponies, all of which are looking really well.

I was reminded of how lucky we are to have the Verderers' Office and their Agisters when I needed to let them know that this donkey looks very lame. Everyone looks out for everyone else on the Forest and a quick call to the office should mean that she is attended to very quickly.

9th August, 2016 Engineering Works

Long day today travelling up to East Sussex to work with Hannah, her Dad, Robin, and their new Shire Horse, Breeze. Breeze is a seventeen year old brood mare who has lived a sheltered but pleasant existence in a herd of other mares. She's due to foal in April, 2017 but in the meantime needs to catch up on a bit of training on leading and foot handling and her feet are HUGE.

 

We divided the day up into five sections, bringing her in from the field and taking her back out in between every one so that we could practice catching, leading, and ground work, as well as taking incremental steps towards being able to pick her feet up.

Once again I needed to teach her that having her legs touched did not mean that she should pick them up, especially as Hannah needs to be able to apply ointment to her legs where she has being rubbing them because of mites. Once this was established I introduced a set signal to ask her to pick her foot up.

In a short while, and in stages, she was having her feet picked out for the first time since she arrived two months ago, and beginning her preparation for a visit from the farrier.

It's quite a reach to catch her but she seems to like human company...

...and was soon leading nicely instead or pulling and pushing people around.

Between sessions, Hannah's Dad educated me about cartwheels - the filloes around the outside (inside the metal tyre) were usually made from ash, the spokes from oak, and the knave from elm. The knave on this wheel was prepared for a Collinges axle which was a patented design and could be oiled without jacking the wheels up or taking them apart.

This is a shoe from a 6 month old Shire Horse in 1966. In those days it was common to shoe very young horses as they had to travel long distances on the road with their dam.

Robin is at his happiest when he is around a horse, especially the heavy breeds, which he was brought up with. He's a fascinating man to talk to.

7th August, 2016 Olympic Mule Flying

A welcome day off with just maintenance duties to do. The traffic was heavy and slow on the way to the fields and there was plenty of animal traffic too.