Yesterday was a most satisfactory day. We took the ponies out for a slightly longer than average adventure in the autumn sun and it was absolutely gorgeous.
( Illustrated Edition )

Today it was blustery, which meant the hedge along one side of our school was doubly full of monsters. I've got things to a point where if the weather is normal Zorro doesn't worry about it at all but when the wind is up a little he can find it a bit anxious and will fixate on the hedge and refuse to go near it. We've worked on this a lot over the ( Read more... )

Today was not the conventional working day. Firstly we had a whole lot of new desks arrived from Ikea so we spent the first few hours of the morning building those, then as we got that finished a swarm of bees arrived and parked in the bushes by the front door of our office building so we got to watch hundreds of bees and then watch a beekeeper ( Read more... )

Today Zorro and I went out on our first solo hack after a somewhat disastrous endeavour a couple of months ago which ended in a full on argument with spinning, rearing and bucking in the middle of the lane. I started off down the hill on the lane, but after a whole bunch of things happened in the first three hundred yards or so ( car coming round ( Read more... )

We rode the ponies down the the stream today, on a short path that takes us down the old hollow lane at the bottom of the boys field to a small brook ( actually called "the smallbrook" ) that flows down that valley. I didn't ride the whole way down as the first bit is quite steep and I actually find going downhill on horseback still quite ( Read more... )

Today we had a very gentle ride out, a bit of walking, a few short trots. Nothing too much- sleepsy_mouse had a bit of a brakes and gravity problem with Small a couple of weeks ago ( he could do gallop to halt in two strides, she couldn't ) so we wanted to do the same route again gently just so he knows he can go up that hill without needing to go top speed. It ( Read more... )

I've hardly been home the last few weeks, going from work to the ponies, playing in the school and then sorting out their evening feeds and ambling home around sunset ( currently about 9:00 ) to grab some dinner and go to bed ( Read more... )

Yesterday we made a sudden decision to go down to the New Forest and watch a day of Steve's clinic there ( full report on the one we rode on is in progress, I promise ) which was really interesting- great to see him working with different people and horses and both Steve and Irena seemed pleased to see us, which was really nice ( Read more... )

Yesterday we had lessons with Julian, riding the charming spanish horse Carel again. I really enjoyed that- by the end of my lesson I had the feeling as we trotted that I wasn't just being carried along by him but that I was more integrated into the movement, really with him. It was an absolutely amazing feeling, something I don't think I've ever ( Read more... )

It's been a good weekend- we have been able to ride both days, cunning use of various weather forecasts suggesting it would be sunny Saturday morning (maybe an exaggeration but it didn't rain) so we got up early to ride out and did a little hack on the common on Saturday, getting back to the yard just as the heavy weather really kicked in ( Read more... )