August, 2006

I started the month with a 99.9% horse who is an absolute darling until anyone produces a set of clippers. Poor lad has obviously had a bad experience at some time and trembles as soon as he hears the noise. I encouraged his owner to walk around with something vibrating in her pocket for the week before I met him and she had got as far as being able to lay the clippers on the floor next to his feed bucket while he ate. We used a little travelling hair dryer to desensitize him to noise and warm air before we just touched him with the clippers. We finished the session by being able to touch him all the way up his hogged mane to his ears. He has had this problem for a long time and it will take some time for him to get over it but it was a good start; much better than having to resort to a so-called humane twitch everytime. Twitches may work in the short term but eventually the horse gets wise and starts to play up way before the twitch arrives. I wish vets wouldn't resort to them quite so quickly - if they want to keep themselves safe why on earth don't they start with something as basic as a skull cap?!
Now don't get too excited, but my lovely man, David is off to do his Stage I at the end of August. David is unwittingly good with horses - he has no preconceived ideas about them and see them for what they are - a horse. He doesn't feel the need to dominate them or project his unresolved emotional issues on to them and they seem to find his chest a very comfortable place to be. He doesn't do ego and he doesn't do macho even though he has a motorbike and leathers. He doesn't do competitive and he doesn't do stressful. He's the only person I trust to put me on an unbacked or remedial horse. On the other hand, he has an interesting style in long-reining.......

July 2006

I spent the first weekend of July doing one-to-one work and a small demonstration at a livery yard on the Isle of Wight. Phew! What a scorcher as the papers always say. It was extremely hot in the sand school. The following day it was off to Exmoor. Regrettably the Open day couldn't take place because the building hadn't been completed but I was able to work with the new staff, Laura and Caitlin, who are both wonderful and some of the ponies that the Exmoor Pony Centre will be using for trekking. I was happy to hear that these ponies will be rotated so that they have a break from trekking and that they are going to live out full time when they are not working. It was also a great opportunity to go and see Billy Milton and Liony. We took Billy out for his first walk on the roads and he loved every minute of it - he has such courage and was happy to take the lead in front of Merrion and to go up to things like tractors and give them a jolly good inspection. Liony is living at Twitchen Farm at Challacombe; yet another lovely place that does bed and breakfast for horses as well as people. Liony looked extremely well and has, at last, filled out. David and I went down to the Dartmoor Pony Centre at Brimpts Farm, Dartmeet and met Dru the project manager. She told us all about the scheme for the preservation of the Dartmoor Hill Pony and to increase the marketability of the Dartmoor colts. Once again, it all comes down to sensitive early handling.
During my first quiet week in months, I went to Malvern to see my Grandad, Pye. He was in good health so we went off to see my cousin Rosie who works for Weston's Cider in Much Marcle (Fred West country!). Unfortunately I am no relation to the Westons but I they always look pleased to see me anyway. The visitor centre is excellent and the cider too but the highlight was being able to groom their Shire horses and to meet their new arrival, Duke. Rosie's husband Tom has recently taken over the reins, quite literally, and drives their team through the middle of Ledbury.

June 2006

This is a special message for Linda Ray Brown - if you are reading this please get on with your coursework and stop surfing the net!
Good news - it looks like I will be doing regular work at the Margaret Green Foundation Trust, a charity set up for animals. They are hoping to re-home more horses in the future and need some more focused training for some of them to enable this to happen. Bad news, I came off one of the Fell ponies at speed and although I haven't broken anything, I am so sore I could cry. I am forced to catch up with admin work and daytime t.v. Fortunately David came to my rescue over the weekend and helped me to look after the ponies (and my landlord's flowers, fish and pheasants). The following week Auriol, Bea, Sheila and Yolanda all helped me to work the horses and keep the fields tidy. Auriol has even offered to take my crutches back to the hospital! I managed to ride a few times and to do lots of groundwork. At the end of the week the two Fell ponies and Boss all went home leaving me a rope-shy New Forest Pony to work with. For a change, he is not black!
During the week my talk on the Moorland Mousie Trust went down well and raised a little money for the charity itself.
I had a wonderful animal sitting job this week not only do I have to feed the cat and the ponies but I also have to provide cordon bleu food for the wild birds, foxes and badgers. Each evening David and I have sat extremely still in the summerhouse and watched the badgers and foxes.





A little rant about saddles. It's really quite simple, a decent horse deserves a decent saddle. All horses are decent therefore, they should all have a decent saddle right from the outset. I have had too many horses come in accompanied by terrible saddles that I am told will do for starting them ( because "it's not worth getting him a good saddle yet because he will change shape"). What message does it give a horse if the first time you sit on it with a saddle it is bloomin' uncomfortable if not painful and when they move it restricts their movement? I have seen horses with saddle damage simply from being long-lined in a badly fitting saddle. Muscle wastage can happen really quickly. When someone buys or gets given a horse, no matter how cheap and cheerful the horse is, they should still budget for a good saddle that fits properly. I am amazed by some of the saddles I see being used on horses - they are too narrow at the front, twisted and lumpy, having not been serviced or checked for years. Saddles should be checked for fit at least every 12 months and fully serviced (locally this costs me less than £50). The flock shouldn't just be topped up, it needs to be replaced. I don't care if the saddle has a posh label - if it is too narrow, it is too narrow. There are very few saddle makers or fitters that I feel able to recommend - most simply fit to the shape of the horse without allowing for the recover of badly wasted muscles and just exacerbate the problem. I really don't like synthetic saddles as they are so unsympathetic to the shape of the horse; I never see top riders using them. I am reserving judgement on treeless saddles as I am not convinced that they don't create pressure points on the horse at the front, back and where the stirrups straps cross the horse's back. I have found them to be too slippy in most cases for using on starting horses. Poorly fitting saddles are one of the major factors in creating behavioural problems in horses - a horse can't tell you that a saddle is nearly killing him, all he can do is fidget when he is tacked up, pull faces at you, move awkwardly when ridden and when he feels the need to shout, start to nap, buck or rear. Don't get me on to Dutch gags and martingales!!!
I have been to visit Kelly at Lambourn and it was good to catch up with all the exciting things that Intelligent Horsemanship is doing. The courses are as popular as ever- always oversubscribed. I had the privilege of riding out on Kelly's beloved Pie alongside her lovely new racehorse, Nessie. Kelly gave me the kick start I have been needing since I came off a couple of weeks ago. Despite having good reviews, I do suffer from self-doubt. That's one of the side-effects of having an open-mind; you always wonder if you could be doing something differently. Nevertheless, by the time that the rope-shy pony went home, I could ground tie him and throw a rope on the floor next to him without him even attempting to leave. With him I used the de-sensitization technique coupled with using a click and a reward. Next week is going to be strange as I have no ponies in at all as I wind down ready for Exmoor.
Out on the Forest, my three ponies are doing extremely well and haven't taken to chasing tourists or lane creeping. Blue is living with Cinders, a pony I fed through the winter as she was so thin. Nell has taken up with Oliver, a big blue roan gelding and little Pie, the honorary Welsh New Forest Pony is co-habiting with a little skewbald mare and her dun coloured foal. I see them almost every day as they tend to drink over at Janesmoor Pond now that the streams and small ponds are dry. They don't come back for food anymore.

May, 2006 (4)

On Bank Holiday Monday I ran a "Turning Fear into Curiosity" course with the help of David, Kayti and Alison. Despite the odd heavy shower, it was a wonderful day. All the people and the horses that came were lovely and the highlight was a congo of ponies following the noisy tractor around the field and then weaving in and out of the bollards behind David on the trail bike.





During the last week of May I have worked with a pony that is very frightened of tractors and noisy vehicles. This seems to stem from her being run over as a youngster - even though it wasn't a tractor that hit her. We can only guess at how noisy this would have seemed at the time. On the NFED open day she followed the little grey Ferguson tractor in the field and the following day we took her up and down the track walking behind and beside the tractor before performing gentle "fly-pasts". She did well at this and became blase about the whole thing and the day after that we repeated this exercise down a narrow lane where the hedges are high. She then graduated to a bigger, redder, noisier Massey Ferguson tractor with cattle trailer attached. Again she was fine. Before she went home on Saturday, she was ridden beside the tractor and it was driven past her down a narrow lane. Eventually she was cantering with it next to her!

May, 2006 (3)

Halfway through the month I went to a talk by Patrick Kempe at the Wessex Classical Riding Group. His talk was excellent - he described the horse festival in Portugal and how he came to buy his fabulous Lusitano horse, Tetua. Tetua graces the cover of Margrit Coates' book Horses Talking. Patrick is also a healer and has his own website. By coincidence I am phoned the next day by a lady who has imported an Andulucian stallion and is worried about the future. I urge her to ring Patrick because he has having so much fun with his horse - which show jumps, does Iberian horse classes, picks up litter on the Forest and plays football. I am feeling a little sad myself because Olly and the lovely Hackney horse are due to go home and I have become very fond of them.
Two new New Forest ponies, Jamie and Oliver (formerly Graham!) have arrived for some handling before they get turned out in the field next door. They belong to my neighbour who very kindly gives me access to her outdoor school. Jamie is bright chestnut and arrived in a delapidated trailer. The other, a rose grey, was bred by the same people as my Forest pony, Nell. Both are friendly and need to be get use to being touched, having a headcollar on and being led.





This week I went to Patrick Kempe's to experience healing for the first time. Patrick tells me that his horse is a healer too and I spent a long time with my hands on this beautiful horse. I wish I could say that everything became clear after that but I did feel I got something positive out of it and felt quite serene on the way home.
The following day I went down to The Donkey Sanctuary for a Donkey Behaviour Course only to find that the course was being presented by Ben Hart. What a bonus. It was good to be made aware of the significant differences in the natural herd behaviour of donkeys and the way that they react to fear and pain. Ben uses a lot of positive reinforcement with the donkeys and it was a great opportunity to watch clicker training in action. He worked with a mule called Mrs Knox although he calls her Martha (pronounced Marfa) because when asked she says "I'm arfa donkey and I'm arfa an 'orse".
I do despair of the New Forest Commoners sometimes. There is a pony walking around this village at the moment who likes like a skeleton. I mean condition score 1. Visitors are shocked by her appearance and it will be giving the New forest commoners as a whole a very bad reputation. She has a colt foal at foot which is doing really well and she is now about 30 and probably won't carry another foal. She is absolutely valueless to the Commoner who owns her. I have offered to buy her and her foal but the Commoner said that he didn't like the fact that I had said that she was thin and would rather take her off the Forest himself and send her to Beaulieu Road Sales..... which means for meat. So she has to suffer for his pride. If I contact the RSPCA or ILPH they won't be able to do anything until she is at death's door and anyway he would probably just take her off and have her killed.

May, 2006 (2)

I backed both of the Fell ponies on day six just in the field without separating them. I think they took a lot of comfort in each other's company although, to be frank, it was difficult to get them to stay awake! I just sat on board bareback untangling their manes for a while.At the weekend I am due to go to Exmoor for the Moorland Mousie Sponsored ride. I am borrowing an Exmoor pony called Bracken and it is debatable whether she will carry me or whether I should carry her. There are some very steep hills so I expect I will be on foot for some of them. I have raised over £100 so far and I am hoping to increase that (hint hint). I've always wanted to ride through the water at Tarr Steps - let's hope we don't get swept away.





On the way to Exmoor I went to work with a New Forest pony at Bridgewater that is utterly terrified of ropes and on the way back I go to see yet another black horse. Both of them are likely to be coming in for me to work with.

May, 2006 (1)

Boss, the Friesian Cross is now backed and has been introduced to the pleasure of long-reining on the Forest. I have to think ahead with this horse because he can't just walk under all the trees! He has worn his saddle and a Myler bit and seems to approve of both. (he is in a 5 1/2" Myler slotted comfort snaffle with 04 mouthpiece - plenty of room for his tongue). The Hackney horse is much more relaxed about being ridden now - she is wearing a 4 1/2" Myler Comfort Snaffle and seems quite happy in it.
Poor Ollie has his social status radically altered when he was castrated. He stood like a rock to be sedated and I felt like a traitor! He went through the operation very well and was soon up and enjoying a new area of grass. He will go home in about two weeks time.
Two super Fell ponies have arrived for starting. They are very typical of the breed and quite bewitching. Their groundwork is so light I can't wait to take them for their first confidence walk on the Forest. They arrived beautifully groomed...... and tomorrow I am going to get them muddy! In the meantime, Boss has proved to be an amazing horse and is happily plodding about in the inclosure with me on board and is apparently frightened of nothing. I rode him back from the school yesterday along the roads and he was absolutely fine. He had a good look at some donkeys but was all curiosity and not a hint of apprehension.the Hackney horse is riding out like a ranch horse and loves it when we go looking for my Foresters. She gets quite broody when she sees the foals. Little Oll is walking out in hand and can now pick his feet up for me without playing colt games.