(no subject)
22 August 2010 22:53![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glenatronIt's been a pretty cool weekend, in spite of the endless grey skies and constant drizzle. Yesterday we started by taking our recently-fixed lorry out for a bit of a run. It went really well, which is a good sign as it's been out of action for a while. With a new coil pack, set of leads and set of plugs, it appears to be very happy.
In the afternoon we had some friends over to visit, one of whom we had only really met online before and it was really good to get to meet her in person. Obviously, the kind thing to do was to put her up on Zorro...
Nikki retrains racehorses a lot of the time, so Zorro was a different kind of thing to what she's used to- brakes are never a problem with him.
She got some really nice stuff from him.
Its really nice when someone else rides my pony and he's really good and they enjoy it.
Today we thought we'd try the box with both ponies in it ( something we've never been able to do before ) because we wanted to know it would handle alright with them. I set about loading Zorro and, once again, he decided it was going to be a slow process. Typically he walks straight to a halfway point up the ramp and then stands there and has to be coaxed step by step the rest of the way on. Then we work on it for a while, get him to load and off we go. He's better for a while and then after a break he's the same again. This time, particularly having watched Martin work through this a couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to up the ante and actually teach him to load rather than just having to go through a step by step process every time we did it. It was a tough session, including my toes getting trodden on twice in a row, but by the end Zorro was marching straight into the box when I asked him to and, after a few times when he turned and came right back out, waiting there until invited back out. A very clever pony.
Then![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sleepsy_mouse and Small showed how it was done.
After that fairly high intensity work, we weren't sure it would be fair to take the ponies out for a drive. We'll do that in the week, but it was a much bigger deal for Zorro than I expected to get him loading smoothly and it seemed that it was plenty for him to do that.
After that we headed down the lane and I rode little Xefira for the first time since I broke my collar bone. It remains a real pleasure to work with the young mare, although she's still half convinced that the best solution to me putting my leg on is probably to kick the underside of my foot. Or to nom my shin. Certainly she'll try those two before she tries moving her feet. I like her a whole lot and it was a lot of fun to ride her. It won't be long until she's a really splendid riding horse.
As we were packing up after that I noticed a flurry of movement in a neighbouring field and realised it was a sparrowhawk having just dived on a pigeon, which continued to struggle as the sparrowhawk began plucking it, quite a remarkable sight.
In the afternoon we had some friends over to visit, one of whom we had only really met online before and it was really good to get to meet her in person. Obviously, the kind thing to do was to put her up on Zorro...
Nikki retrains racehorses a lot of the time, so Zorro was a different kind of thing to what she's used to- brakes are never a problem with him.
She got some really nice stuff from him.
Its really nice when someone else rides my pony and he's really good and they enjoy it.
Today we thought we'd try the box with both ponies in it ( something we've never been able to do before ) because we wanted to know it would handle alright with them. I set about loading Zorro and, once again, he decided it was going to be a slow process. Typically he walks straight to a halfway point up the ramp and then stands there and has to be coaxed step by step the rest of the way on. Then we work on it for a while, get him to load and off we go. He's better for a while and then after a break he's the same again. This time, particularly having watched Martin work through this a couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to up the ante and actually teach him to load rather than just having to go through a step by step process every time we did it. It was a tough session, including my toes getting trodden on twice in a row, but by the end Zorro was marching straight into the box when I asked him to and, after a few times when he turned and came right back out, waiting there until invited back out. A very clever pony.
Then
sleepsy_mouse and Small showed how it was done. After that fairly high intensity work, we weren't sure it would be fair to take the ponies out for a drive. We'll do that in the week, but it was a much bigger deal for Zorro than I expected to get him loading smoothly and it seemed that it was plenty for him to do that.
After that we headed down the lane and I rode little Xefira for the first time since I broke my collar bone. It remains a real pleasure to work with the young mare, although she's still half convinced that the best solution to me putting my leg on is probably to kick the underside of my foot. Or to nom my shin. Certainly she'll try those two before she tries moving her feet. I like her a whole lot and it was a lot of fun to ride her. It won't be long until she's a really splendid riding horse.
As we were packing up after that I noticed a flurry of movement in a neighbouring field and realised it was a sparrowhawk having just dived on a pigeon, which continued to struggle as the sparrowhawk began plucking it, quite a remarkable sight.
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no subject
Date: 22 Aug 2010 23:41 (UTC)This horse box thing has me confused. Is this not the same death trap you were intent on selling?
no subject
Date: 23 Aug 2010 00:16 (UTC)no subject
Date: 23 Aug 2010 09:37 (UTC)no subject
Date: 24 Aug 2010 15:39 (UTC)And also, lovely cob. He is such a beautiful horse.
no subject
Date: 24 Aug 2010 19:30 (UTC)And the big clever cob walked straight on there this evening - no fuss at all!