Yesterday evening we needed to get things done at the yard and I wasn't in a riding mood, so Iris' evening work was to come in and do a bit of groundwork. A few weeks ago I had done a short groundwork session that ended up with a bit of liberty stuff and she did really great while she stayed with me, so as I had a herecirm and a camera I asked her to do a ( Read more... )

I haven't updated here for the longest time, which makes me a bad imaginary internet friend and I do apologise. The reason is mostly that I have been very busy with layers of busyness on top of further busyness. This is not a thing of which I am proud but it accurately describes where I am at right now. And so, from busyness, onto business. The ( Read more... )

On Sunday I finally managed to do something I have wanted to try for the last five years and actually rode my horse to cattle here in the UK.

There aren't many places that one has the opportunity to do that in this country - the only one I know of is Bar S in Kent who are about seventy miles away, so when I saw they had a cattle clinic there I ( Read more... )

I have about a million things to post about, but I am also totally fired up about this game writing project I'm working on so that is consuming much of my attention and evening computer time at the moment ( Read more... )

I've been hella busy with some freelance work stuff over the last few weeks, especially as for a fortnight starting on December 21st we lost power for some part of every day. When you are trying to work on a computer from home, routinely losing electricity and internet connectivity for up to three days at a stretch makes things difficult. Also our ( Read more... )

Just a few random pictures from the last few days that I am putting together as though they add up to a post:

( Illustrated version )

On Friday I went out on the kind of ride that is the reason we own horses.

( A bright morning and a fine horse with long legs for running )

The last week or two the swamp at our yard has returned to it's summertime status of arena, so I've done bits of schooling with Iris. After reading this piece on skeletal injuries I was very conscious that we need to work on our correctness a little, so for the last few days I have been working with real focus on softness and balance ( Read more... )

Now if you look at my previous post, my forecast was "hilarious fiasco" so lets see what we achieved, shall we?

( In pictures )

Tomorrow evening will be the first dressage competition for Team Iris. I'm pretty confident it will go well, given all the things we have in our favour:

• I have had to borrow a bridle because I always take the nosebands off mine because they look silly with western gear and then I lose them.
• Turns out the bridle I have borrowed is actually black, with ( Read more... )