21st November,2016 Skid-addle

Camels may be ships of the desert but they can't actually cope with water very well and slip in the slightest bit of mud. So it's been a day off for me since I can't really help much when the weather is like this, and don't want to get under anyone's feet.

All of our own horses seem fine in the lingering storm, taking refuge behind hedges. Henrietta and I had a semantic argument about the new fences from JustJumps proving that one woman's jump is another woman's plinth.

21st November, 2016 We Plough the Fields and Scatter

Don't you just love it when the horses practise their emergency drills as soon as you turn them into a new field? They'd tell you it has got to be done!

The feather duster was out again this morning to help with a colt that did not want to be touched. This was a bit of an emergency appointment because his headcollar was becoming too tight and at risk of digging into his face. He was so friendly by the end of the session that he was turned out without one, knowing that he will allow himself to be caught again.

"It was so interesting  to watch you working  with  X & so pleased  he responded so quickly. I can't thank you enough." Colt's owner

At 2.20 p.m. today, I came across this lady feeding carrots to the ponies alongside the road, the B3078, at the Godshill Cricket Pitch. When I pipped my horn at her to say "Don't do that!" and parked my car to go and talk to her, she got into her car and drove off out of the other entrance. She then parked on a drive opposite and emptied a full bag of carrots next to the gateway before driving off. The B3078 is one of the most dangerous roads for animal deaths and casualties on the Forest and this sort of behaviour, driven by a misguided love for the animals, is just the sort of thing that encourages them to hang about at the roadside or cross it. I hope she gets prosecuted by the Verderers for sheer stupidity. The carrots were good enough for Sunday Lunch and if she had waited to see the consequences of her actions she could have had some horsemeat with it.

And somebody has been playing with my new cross-country jumps and doing it all in slow-motion too.

20th November, 2016 Sweetness and Heavy

Since I last saw Breeze three months ago in her new home in East Sussex she has really settled in and seems to be enjoying one to one attention. Today we upped that ratio to four to one with me, Hannah, Laura and Robin all taking turns to groom her and work her.

At seventeen years old she hasn't be handled much but since my last visit she has had her feet trimmed and her leading work is coming along very nicely.

She still has a tendency to push her way through people so we spent time teaching her to back up nicely and by the end of the session she was lifting up her back, lowering her neck, and no longer bracing.

I particularly wanted Laura to work with her as she keeps her pony, Juniper, just three miles away and it would be good for Hannah to have someone IH minded to work with her from time to time when she needs a bit of support or reassurance.

Breeze is still very protective of her legs which have been itchy and covered in sores for years making her hypersensitive to any touch. We used clicker training to ask her to accept touch from the feather duster so that she might accept cream being put on her legs without Hannah having to worry about her back or getting kicked.

She is such a beautiful mare and inside her tummy there is a large bun due to be born next March. She will be able to spend the rest of her life with this, her last foal.

Going back out to the field after a successful day...

"Hope you had a good journey home. Thanks again for today. You did so well even getting to trim her feather which will help her. Think we achieved so much today. She really engaged with us and was thinking - I'm sure she'll sleep well. Got lots to be going on with. You are definitely an inspiration to me. I will keep you posted with how we are getting on. Proud of our gentle giant:)" HM

19th November, 2016 Mug

I don't look like this

Christmas is approaching and once again my insurance renewal papers have arrived, offering to relieve me of 1/20th of my turnover, not profit, for the next 12 months. I have never been so close to stopping what I do. Indeed, I've even written a chapter for my book called, 'The Beginning of the End' which itself starts with the day that I was crushed in a horsebox by the horse that was so anxious that he wanted to leave.

That was the start of a year during which someone decided that they wouldn't pay me for an hour to go and fetch the panels that they had borrowed for five weeks to make their loading practice safer; where another woman declared "Well I am paying you!" whilst messing me about for an hour while I tried to quietly work with her daughter's horse on a Sunday, and someone thought they would talk about about me on Facebook because I had been unable to clip the legs of their pony when they had spent an age terrifying it with the clippers beforehand. In that particular case I felt that a pony that was that terrified and dangerous, and had been so for years, should not be clipped but oh no, he MUST be clipped because he was going to be shown; I should have walked away.

But when the chips are down, and other clichés, I do it for the horses, and also for all of the owners who are rays of light through some of this gloom. It's a year when I have been surrounded by some of the most complex loading problems but owners that are prepared to practice and be utterly patient and understanding with their horses. I have also helped many people in absolute crisis with their horses and only yesterday answered thirty messages over a seven hour period on my one day off in order to head of a disaster for someone who needs to load two fairly unhandled yearlings for a longish journey and needed to understand that some horseboxes and trailers are just not suitable. I have also booked in a colt whose head-collar is becoming dangerously tight who won't let anyone approach with biting or kicking them. Both of these jobs, if the first lady can't get the help for free, will take place on a Sunday.

I try to find a way through for the horse that is ethical and safe and meets the needs of the owner. To be honest it is usually the owner that is getting in the way of the horse's progress, either by being unrealistic or inconsistent. I've met owners who think I am being too strong with their horse when I insist that he doesn't walk all over me, or bash me with his head, or just ask him to pay attention to what we are trying to do. Others think I am a tree-hugger because I won't force a horse to go forward when he is troubled, or enter a horsebox and stay there when he is frightened. As a clerk in the courts in my previous life, I had to be independent of the prosecution and defence, so to be taking an independent middle ground is not unusual to me.

If you are going to get me out in 2017 please can I ask you not to be a DINER: delusional, ignorant, naïve, emotional or rude around your horse.

I'm off now to drive two and half hours to help a super client with her beautiful Shire horse and then drive two and a half hours back.

18th November, 2016 Ifor Something to Tell You

This sign appears on all new Ifor Williams trailers - have you read it? The top section sections says that no horse or pony is to be tethered to the outside of the trailer or transported in the area adjacent to this door. In other words, horses should not be travelled in the trailer without a front breast bar - either half or full width. The reason for this is that having the horse (able to go) further forward affects the nose weight of the trailer on the tow bar and seriously affects the stability of the trailer and the towing vehicle.

These eyes, which are provided in order to make it easier to undo and drop down the breast bar from outside should never be used to tie the horse up. Any strain on them can distort the structure of the trailer and could also affect the ability of the bars to be dropped down in an emergency.

Older Ifors have these at the front instead of eyes, and all Ifors have them at the back for the back bars; it is cheap and easy to replace all of them with the new eyes which can be obtained from an Ifor dealer. It's important to make sure that these older 'screws' have not seized up and that you know where your Allen key is kept.

The correct way to fasten the front bars, which is clear in all Ifor literature, but not particularly highlighted, is with the fastener to the OUTSIDE of the trailer as shown above as this means that if the bar is released from the outside using the Allen key or by turning the eyes, it will drop down to some extent whereas if the hinged part of the bar is to the outside, it will not.

17th November, 2016 Blown Away

Although Ebony is a Friesian horse, she almost has the ears of a Mawari

 "Ebony was a super duper horsey earlier. Was doing some desensitisation with her and we decided to run with it despite hideous rain and wind! Takes a very special horse to allow two flapping carrier bags and a feather duster to be rubbed over her in this weather! Abandoned the process in the end as it just got silly in that weather but looking forward to carrying on with the work in a few weeks. I am lucky to have such a special girl!" PG

I was more concerned about the health of the umbrella and the tarpaulin than Ebony's nerves because despite the 40 mph winds she was completely calm about the carrier bags.

16th November, 2016 Living on Sandwiches

Sammy went out for a shorter walk sandwiched between two sessions of groundwork aimed primarily at getting him a bit more responsive. Whether because of a strong into pressure instinct or because it has been a useful strategy, Sammy can be an immovable object forward or backwards. Having made some more progress, I practiced it on the walk, and then checked it again at home. Let's hope it overrides his default position.

"What a huge difference in Sammy today.  When I turned up at the field him and Ollie were racing around acting real fools and perhaps today wasn't a day for the tack.  Instead I put his dually on and set off to meet Caroline  for a two hours walk around the forest.  

Apart from two small blips - one when a very vocal cow decided to follow us and when another horse over took us (both understandable)  he was so much more aware of me - I came back without aching arms and without pushing me around." YS

A glimpse of Zebdi passport shows that he is the grandson of Oberon, a Skewbald Sports Horse from Dutch lines, that was owned by the Queen. No wonder he was expected to be such a high flyer. His groundwork session today, which proved that he can be as quiet as a New Forest pony when led, was sandwiched around a visit from the vet. Alan (Hough) from Celtic Vets had actually come to visit another horse but agreed to make friends with Zebdi while he was waiting. It's good to see that Zebdi is not frightened of vets per se. 

Once again the groundwork concentrated on asking him to walk immediately next to his owner's shoulder and to walk when she walked and to stop when we stopped. I find it very hard to fathom out the benefits of leading a horse from its shoulder when all that does is put the horse ahead of you and already a metre into it's getaway plan if it has one. If the horse needs to be slowed down then the inevitable consequence is that it will curl around you and become crooked - look how many crooked horses you see in an in-hand class where the only benefit of having the handler at the horse's shoulder seems to be to hide the handler from the view of the judge. Once a horse starts to circle around you when pulled, they learn not only to take a constant pull, but to move you with their left shoulder. It's madness.