A few pictures from a chilly weekend

[glenatron]

It's been nippy but pleasantly sunny this weekend so as you might expect we've shared what time we could with our beasts.


This was to illustrate a really good little exercise I came up with working with Zorro on Saturday- the concept being that I walk along one rail shadow, Zorro walks along the other, putting about five feet between us. There was nobody around to take pictures unfortunately so I had to use the timer on the camera, which mean't I didn't manage to get a single one where Zorro and I were actually both where we were supposed to be. It's something useful to try if you have a horse who likes to push into your space a little,though, because you can see very clearly if that is what they are doing.


Small Pony is fascinated by clothes. In this case he had grabbed my sleeve and was waving my arm about. It was actually very funny indeed and - as with almost everything Small does - absolutely bless.


Today we went out for a ride on the Punchbowl, which is a big valley not far from the yard. We tend not to go there that often, probably because they normally have cattle or ponies grazing there and we're not sure how the horses will respond, but today we figured it was worth a try. This is on the path up the hill.


More riding through the woods.


Heading over the brow towards the valley.


I meant to get a picture of the view over the valley, which Zorro was enjoying here, but instead I got a crazy impressionist kind of thing that although entirely unplanned is quite an interesting photograph, by my standards at least.

The Punchbowl is National Trust land and has gates and cattle grids on all the trails where they cross over onto it. On the way down the hill I didn't open the gate wide enough and Zorro had to scrape through, of course, the widest bit of him was my leg, which was a little unlucky. It could have been a lot worse though - I lost a bit of skin and I think I'll have some bruising to show, but thanks to long boots and multiple layers for cold weather everything seems to work fine.

Comments

[penella22.livejournal.com]

Looks like gorgeous weather and a wonderful ride. Sadly, I have spent much of my weekend having a migraine and *not* being with my beastie, although right now at least I am getting some javascript work done. Small is really hilarious, isn't he? And Sage has just started to grasp the idea of factoring my legs into the equation after some exercises we did while riding with just one rein. Mainly, everytime he got my leg too close to the rail in the round pen, I used that leg to move his butt over and stopped forward motion until he listened. Still working on putting buttons in there, he's very dull and unresponsive in the beginning of those sessions, but it does show in other circumstances outside the round pen, where he hasn't scraped my leg in awhile...knock on wood. We've never practiced gaits though...probably a bigger challenge.

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

A challenge when although the gates are horse-friendly, so the catch is well within reach, they are also on a slope ( so the gates close themselves under gravity ) and there is no reinforcement to the ground by them so they are quite muddy and having a narrow fenced area beside the accompanying cattle grids means it's a bit trappy for the horses as well.

[z111.livejournal.com]

I should try that shadow thing. What do you do when he barges?

[evil-c.livejournal.com]

I love the area where you ride, its all so pretty. Must bring the Elizabeth pony over and join you both for a ride when she's back in work.

[oifonly.livejournal.com]

lovely pictures. That looks like a gorgeous place to ride, too.

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

I was just swinging the tail of the rope across my chest from side to side. If he started coming into my space the end of the rope would pop him on the shoulder, increasingly firmly if he ignored it the first time. Fairly quickly he got the idea that I wanted him a little further out.

The other important thing is to make sure there is lots of slack in the rope so you're not putting enough feel on the line that he will feel you are asking him in. Experiment with leading another person with a rope looped around their wrists to see whether you are asking the horse in without meaning to- it can be very surprising how little it takes, you can certainly be doing that while maintaining a float in the rope.

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

You should, she would love it...

[spirithorse21.livejournal.com]

I wish we had more fabulous places to ride like you all have. I mean, sure, I've got a land to ride out on, but I'm envious of all the *public* bridle paths you all have. Our government types just don't much see the need to let equestrians get out and stretch their legs.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Lovely trails!

Can I request an English-to-English translation? What is "bless"?

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

It's a bit like cute or adorable somehow I suppose. I don't know how it got there but if you imagine some kind of Dickensian mother hen character saying "aw, bless the little orphans childers runnin' and playin' in the streets" and give that 150 years to contract down to just "aw bless" and you have the sentiment at least. At some point quite recently it has become an adjective rather than a verb, so you can talk about something having blessness ( or blessage, if you're me ) as well.

I think that only really happens in the UK as yet.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Cool, thanks. I'd guessed it was something sort of like that? But figured I would ask to make sure, since you're, y'know, right here and available for questioning. :-p

[z111.livejournal.com]

Oh, I definitely had been (inadvertently) asking him to come in by holding the lead too close.

He's better ever since I put a stud chain on his nose one day and got really serious about him not pushing me around. But if I give him an inch, he takes a mile and he still sometimes comes into my space on turns.

I'm going to try that exercise.

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

I guess we're lucky that so many of the rights of way that used to just be how everyone got around have managed to survive as pathways rather than being turned into roads and we've just kept them. The trail we started off on there is actually a Bridleway Open To All Traffic ( or BOAT ) which means you can take motor vehicles up there. There aren't many of those so it gets a lot of 4x4 and motocross riders, the latter in particular have always been amazingly polite to us as riders whenever we meet on the trail.

We're lucky too in that our area wasn't big agricultural land- a lot of places where you have really large fields ( like where sleepsy_mouse grew up ) tend to have relatively few bridleways and footpaths but because we have sandy soil and not much grows here we have a lot of woodland and open heath and that tends towards being something people need to cross rather than working land.

[skiesfirepaved.livejournal.com]

Gorgeous photos - I am sooooooo jealous of your bridleways!!

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

If you're ever in the area you should totally come and visit.