Category: General Blog

1. Rocky does Dressage - Again!

   Posted on 8:46pm Monday 11th May 2015

   Rocky does Dressage…. Again…

   It has been a few weeks since we last ventured out, and as I was riding a client’s horse at Woodington Training Centre, I thought it only fair that Rocky went too!

   We entered Intro A (again!) as we are not quite ready for Prelim in competition just yet, and then my other horse was entered in the Prelim 18 class.

   We arrived early to ensure no rushing was necessary, and in fact had an hour to our time, so Rocky stood as quiet as a church mouse tied to the trailer munching on his Equilibrium VitaMunch for quite a while before tacking up.

   Perhaps I should have been a bit suspicious of this church mouse, as once tacked up and mounted appeared to turn into a raging bull! Flipping Norah, we could have been doing a GP with the Piaffe, Passage and lateral movements, and that was just getting to the warm up!!

   Having my fabulous trainer Karen’s voice in my head I knuckled down (and sat back!) and put Rocky in his “Box” a term we use to focus him, nothing bad, just a “we are doing XYZ…” rather than allowing Rocky to do his own thing! We spent a fair while working on suppleness and submission, along with transitions to keep him listening. All the time Karen was sat on my shoulder with her words of wisdom running through my head which helped enormously when Rocky decided that actually today being that boring flat stuff was far too boring and wanted to go jumping (that was our last outing), so he decided to make life a little entertaining, having put him in his “box” he wanted to air his opinion on not wanting to be in said box, and after trying to use imaginary goblins to spook at, unsuccessfully, decided the only way he was going to be heard was to attempt to stand up and wave to everyone!

   Immediately Karen appeared in my head and instead of thinking oh ****** here we go, I simply gave him a “positive” leg aid and much to Rocky’s disgust we were on our way again. Seriously, whoever had swopped Rocky for this one was having a real laugh!!

   Our time came, we entered the arena, the bell rang, we went down the CL and…. Well, the real Rocky returned, a decent test was ridden with a few mistakes and tense parts, but overall we had another outing under our belt, albeit a slightly hair raising one for the first 30 minutes!

   The test can be viewed here

   Oh yes our score, well I am absolutely delighted to say we got a 5^th place with 69.57% and some absolutely fabulous comments.

   Then Bella was next up, Jan her lovely owner had got her ready and it was just down to me to get her warmed up ready.

   Bella hasn’t been anywhere for a long while, although she has been to Woodington previously. I have only ridden her once in the last week and never in competition so it was a case of ride by feel.

   She warmed up beautifully, really on the aid and totally the opposite to a certain bay cob!!

   Our time arrived and away we went. She was tense for the first few movements and didn’t really soften, however as we got going she settled beautifully and tried so hard for me, she was a diamond.

   Our test can be viewed here:

   The score was 65.24% and 10^th place which we were over the moon with, such a lovely welsh cob.

   Oh, did I not mention that Bella is Welsh Cob too? Yes, it was a welsh kind of day, and a very very good one at that!

   I shall not be leaving it so long before our next outing again as I think that is what will help Rocky in his education, I just need to make time for it in my very busy schedule!!

   For more pictures pleae visit the Facebook page here

2. A hack which could have ended very badly...

   Posted on 8:44pm Sunday 23rd Nov 2014

   Today's hacking was somewhat eventful and could have been disastrous.....

   After the lovely new clip Rocky had done this morning, as a reward for his impeccable behaviour, I took decided to go out for a short hack, just round the woods and home I thought would be nice even though it was raining and miserable but that wasn't going to stop us!

   We set off and immediately were confronted by a huge tractor towing an even huger trailer containing Christmas trees all wrapped up. Ok, here we go, only 2 minutes in and already we have questions being asked! I managed to park Rocky on the verge and although he was a little unsure, the tractor passed uneventfully. Phew..

   On we went down the track to the woods, the puddles were more like lakes and stretched across the track, ok, we have had some issues with puddles before so leg on positive thoughts and.... Oh we were paddling through! Result! Good boy Rocky said lots of times!

   We met lots of pheasants, cows, more pheasants, more cows and lots more lakes, but all was well until one of the "lakes" seemed to be a lot deeper than Rocky anticipated and he stopped dead, just as a pheasant (yes another!!) tried to fly through some fencing and got trapped prompting some seriously frenzied flapping and squawking from said pheasant, and as this happened Rocky , eyes on stalks at the squawking monster, jumped sideways in a nano second and seemingly got stuck where he landed.

   Thankfully the monstrous bird managed to get through the fence and left but we didn't go anywhere, I peered down to check why and noticed the reason, my poor boy in his attempt to flee from the monster had landed in a collapsed hedge which had hidden barbed wire running through it and he was tangled up in it.

   Omg, don't panic I was telling myself, quick thinking talking quietly to Rocky, who didn't appear phased by this situation thankfully, I leapt off into the water and assessed the barb wire from the ground. Rocky seemed to understand I was trying to free him and stood rock still waiting for me to magic up a plan...

   I managed to untwist the wire from his legs and physically picked up his feet one by one and placed them to safety, from where he casually walked away. I closely inspected his legs for injury, his brushing boots had twisted round but there was no visible sign of blood, but there was lots of mud so I couldn't be sure. Rocky didn't seem upset by the situation and so we walked through the woods until I found somewhere suitable to remount.

   On our ride back home we came across more lakes and to be fair Rocky had a good look at these again but I managed to coax his through, we had little option as this was the only route home!

   On returning home I immediately washed him down and checked him thoroughly for injury, thankfully not a single hair was damaged, unlike his brushing boots which were very badly torn and split.

   I know everybody has their own opinion on boots and leg protection but having witnessed what has happened to Rocky today and the damage inflicted on the boots, I can honestly say I firmly believe that those brushing boots prevented injuries that could have been career threatening, or even worse, just from a simple freak spook.