Friday 15 February 2013

Back in the saddle, just

When I started this blog last year, I was in good health, had a new, calmer horse than the one I regularly fell off before, and was preparing for a new season of pony games, having won the regional championship with our fantastic team of mothers "Les Incroyables". My daughter had just got her first horse on loan and we were thinking about months of lovely rides out and competitions and therefore lots of news for this blog. Oh No, it SO did not work out like that.

First I got bitten by monster horse, which left me unable to ride for weeks, then my back went and I couldn't ride for months. Then the pony games season started.  At the second competition of the season la belle May, my lovely fjord mare, got so excited that we were winning one of our races that she put her head down between  her front legs, and gave a little shake of her shoulders, thereby putting her backside in the air, at full gallop, thus catapulting me into the air, causing me to knock myself out and break a rib. So I couldn't ride again for three months.

So here we are. I rode again for the first time since 2nd December last week just at walk, and again this week at all paces. Most of me seems to work still but I have sadly hung up my pony games hat and have exchanged it for the toughest, thickest cross-country jockey-type skull cap that money can buy. It is silver, and hot, and does not look unlike a large saucepan covering my head, from my eyebrows to the bottom of my neck. Roll on summer!!

But May is still lovely and while I have been on the ground we have started to do a lot of "natural horsemanship" or ethology as it is called here, working with your horse in its language and building the relationship to enable us to work together with the lightest of aids. No whips or spurs or bits, just lots of love and fun. It is great, and May has turned out to be much more sensitive than I realised under all her bravado. More on that later but it makes riding much more satisfying when you have a real bond with your horse.

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