Long and short rides

I don't seem to find much time to blog at the moment.  Fortunately I am finding time to continue riding Dee three times a week mostly and she is getting a lot fitter.  Last Monday I hacked out with a couple of Briwnant friends riding Bella and Duke.  I didn't think to ask how long a ride it would be.  When we took the trail down across the stream from the Wenallt I knew we were going as far as the Ganol.  When we carried on down through the Ganol, I guessed we were going to Fforest Fawr.  This meant a two hour ride – longer than Dee and I had been for a while, but fine.

However when we got to the end of Fforest Fawr—where I expected us to head back to the Ganol—Gail took us along a trail that I did not know.  Fforest Fawr is clearly well named (Fawr means big in Welsh) because we rode for another hour.  It was a lovely ride and I did enjoy it, but I kept thinking that I was sure we were still in Fforest Fawr and it was an hour's ride back from there.  All in all it was a three hour ride and getting gloomy by the time we arrived back at the Wenallt trail.  To my amazement Gail wanted to turn left as we came up the hill from the stream and complete the rest of the Wenallt trail.  This would mean a couple of very steep hills on the trail and finish with a long steep bit of road.  Dee was tired and so was I, so I asked if we could go home along the first part of the Wenallt trail which is flatter and has less road work.  They agreed and this was what we did.

I was pleased with Dee's level of fitness.  It had not been a fast or hard ride—mostly walking with a good few trots and a couple of short canters—but still it was more than she had done for about 18 months.  She was hot and sweaty, but not excessively tired.  It was really dark by the time I decided she had cooled down enough to feed her. 

It was after this ride that I decided I had to have her clipped because I was concerned about her catching a chill, and this was done this morning.  I bathed her after my ride yesterday and kept her in Red's stable overnight, so that she would be clean, dry and ready for us this morning.  She was an absolute angel and looks lovely.  I feel a bit sorry that she now needs to be rugged to live out, but am happy that she will be more comfortable when we ride.

Yesterday we tried hacking out alone again.  This time I decided to try the ride in the more challenging direction – beginning with the track.  She was very slow going along the track, taking short, tense steps.  A couple of times she stopped and I wondered if that was it, but then she carried on.  Eventually we arrived at the little gate and went up into the fields through the bracken, where Dee adopting a more relaxed gait.  She would not go up through the top field so I compromised and let her cut across it.  We then went down and along a new track that Paul has recently cut through the bracken.  She took this completely new path without hesitation.  It is not finished yet, so we had to turn at the end.  We then returned to the gate and back down the track – a complete hack alone again.  Woohoo!!!  I think I'm going to do this little hack once a week as I believe it will slowly build up her confidence about going out on her own.  I think there are a couple of other little hacks on Briwnant land that we can try as well.

The first set of hoof boots I ordered for Dee were not satisfactory and I have sent for a different type.  I'll report on those when they arrive.  I've also ordered some 'rhythm beads'.  These may be a weird new age fad or they may be an amazing native american idea – we shall see.  It looks like a horse necklace and jingles.  The theory is that a. the constant gentle sound stops a spooky horse being so sensitive to the noises they hear when they are out hacking, and b. that the sound of the beads being in rhythm with the natural movement of the horse has a soothing and claming effect.  Interesting.  I'll let you know how that turns out as well – something to try in the arena first I think!

Hoof care

I'm feeling exhausted.  Last week we had a retreat at our home, which was delightful but retreats are always tiring.  It finished on Saturday and I have been out on a hack three times since then.  I rode Dee and Red on Sunday. So it is not surprising that I am feeling so tired. 

We are now into week four of the get-Dee-fit campaign, and there are signs of progress.  She is not puffing so much up the hills and not sweating up so much.  Also she has been a dream to catch the last couple of weeks, so she must be enjoying it.  She is still struggling with the stony parts of the Wenallt trail, so today I have ordered her some hoof boots.  I had to wait until today in order to get a hoof measurement straight after her having her feet trimmed by the farrier. 

Dee had a lot of hoof attention today.  After being shod at the front and trimmed at the back, I cleaned the cracks with hibi scrub, applied hoof hardener, and then filled the parts that needed filling with hoof putty once her feet were dry.  Her hooves are gradually improving and the farrier is happy with them.  He says that her hooves are good and strong and this should only be a temporary problem.  His estimate of the timeframe to which her hoof problems relate, based on an average growth rate, does correlate with her move back from Cornwall.  So I think all this was due to that unsettling time and will indeed be a temporary glitch.  Her feet have always been healthy previously.

Tonight Dee is tucked up in Red's stable because it is worming time.  I'm sure she will not mind this for a night or two – especially as it is pouring with rain at the moment.

Dee has now been sound for five or six weeks.  I've been checking her back regularly as she is doing more work than she had done for quite a long time, and everything is fine.  No swelling, no pain.  I will never know for sure whether it was the Equissage massage equipment that brought on her lameness – it may have simply been coincidental.  I returned the equipment anyway and did receive a full refund.  So that is the end of that little saga.

On Monday I rode with Charlotte, one of the helpers at Briwnant.  She tells me that the horse I pictured in my last post Bareback Riding, 9th October, is not Molly, but Deanna.  Apologies to both mares!  Also my Beloved mentioned that I have not credited him for photographs recently... Practically every photograph used on my blog was taken by my husband, 'ö-Dzin Tridral.  He is becoming quite a skilled photographer and you can see a gallery of his work at Red Bubble and at Zazzle.  Lluniau Naturiol means 'Natural Pictures' which refers to the fact that he does not edit his photographs in any way – they either work or they don't.

Red is seeing the equine dentist on Friday.  It will be interesting to see how he feels about that.  No more riding now until Saturday, so my body has a couple of days to rest.

Bareback riding

I've had a few nice rides on Dee since my last posting, and 'ö-Dzin and I rode out together with Red and Dee on Sunday.  It is ages since we rode out just the two of us on our horses, and it was great to be doing it again.  Red wasn't too keen on taking the lead at the end of the lane and took a few minutes of persuasion, but after getting past that he was fine and we had a lovely ride.

'Napping' must be a British term I think.  It means when a horse stops and refuses to go forward.  When Dee naps she starts to back up if I try to urge her to walk on, and this can be quite dangerous.  Sometimes she will back right to the edge of a ditch or bank.  She used to rear but doesn't do that with me any more.

I showed up at Briwnant this morning expecting to ride out with Nicky, but unfortunately she couldn't make it today.  All this week I've been painting the lounge in our home and I realised that I was physically really tired.  So I took Dee into the arena to play games.  We did some following me around, and circles stepping through with the hind leg, back up, and such like groundwork exercises.  I then decided that it might be nice to jump on her back after all, but didn't really want to fuss with lots of tack.  I just put on her bridle and got on her easily from the mounting block.

We did 20 minutes or so of patterns in the arena at walk and trot.  At first I felt really insecure – it is the first time I have ridden bareback since June 2008.  I know that because I blogged about it!  I soon started to feel more relaxed and confident and began doing a little trotting.  I was trying to engage in meditative riding – feeling the direction I wanted to move in from my navel, keeping myself centred, and trying to communicate through to Dee.  She is more receptive to this on one rein than on the other.  It is inspiring to ride with very little tack and simply endeavour to focus a connection through energy, intention and balance.  One day I will attempt this with just a neck rope.

In 2008 I had discovered that dismounting was a problem for my damaged knee – it cannot cope with the impact of me jumping down. Usually I slide off the saddle so there is no real jump down.  However in the arena I was able to dismount at the block so that there was no great distance for my descent, so that solved that problem.

I think Dee enjoyed being in the arena for a change.  She is quite relaxed and happy in there.  At Wyndham she was always tense and spooky in the arena, but at Briwnant she is chilled about everything.

Today's ride may not have contributed a great deal to the get-Dee-fit campaign, but it it was a good confidence boost with regard to my balance, and a good bonding experience for our relationship.

I think the inquisitive mare in the photograph is called Molly – one of Dee's Briwnant chums.

Momentous day

Today has been quite a momentous day.  Firstly I completed and submitted my tax return this morning – always a daunting task.  It had taken pretty much all of yesterday and half of today to pull all the details together, but now it is done and off my mind.

My reward to myself was to go to Briwnant and ride Dee.  I am trying to ride her more often and get her fit.  Now that Red is ridden regularly as a Briwnant Trekking Centre working horse, I do not have to worry if we can only ride him occasionally because he stays fit through his work for the centre.  Consequently I am concentrating more on Dee.  I have had very little time to work with her since we brought her back from Cornwall and am determined to rectify this. 

As I walked down the first field to catch Dee I met Red walking up.  He wanted me to put the head collar I was carrying on him and seemed quite confused when I did not.  I think it is a real testament to how happy Red is with his life at Briwnant that he was walking up to the gate like this.  Paul had been down to catch a few horses ready for an afternoon lesson in the arena and also a few others for a trail ride.  Red was to be used for the trail ride.  Paul had just said to Red that he was wanted too and to come in, and Red had walked up to the yard completely on his own with no headcollar or anyone coercing him just from this.  What a good lad.

Dee was in the last field, as far away as possible from the yard!  I'm getting fit simply from walking out to get her!  It is uphill pretty much all the way back to the yard, so I sometimes find even this quite tiring even before grooming and riding.  Soon we were ready to go and today was the day I'd decided to take Dee out for a ride on her own.  Readers who have been following my blog for a while will know that Dee will not hack out on her own and naps badly.  However there is an idiosyncrasy to this behaviour of which I have become aware: that she will ride through fields but not along a track or road on her own.  When we were at Ridgeway, she would happily let me ride her around the fields on her own and even take the path across the field behind the stables, but she would not go down the lane.

One of the many advantages of Briwnant is that they have a lot of land, and there is a short ride I can take from the yard, up to the top fields and only finishing with a little bit of the track at the end.  I hoped that because most of it was across fields, and that she would know she was on her way home once we arrived at the track, that she would not nap.  It worked!  We did the whole ride with no napping – the first time we have sucessful hacked out alone on a complete ride since I have owned her.  I feel so proud of her and am absolutely thrilled.  It is only a short ride but includes a steep hill, so it does make her work.  I did not push my luck today and only asked her to walk the circuit, but I will add an extra field to it at the top as she gets used to it where we can have a trot or a canter.

Hopefully this is the beginning of a more satisfying riding experience for us both.  I do wonder whether the napping has something to do with the stoney tracks, and am considering shoeing her on her back feet as well to see if this makes her more relaxed and confident about the tracks.  On our Wenallt trail ride on Monday I was very aware of her hesitancy over the stoney parts of the track.  My only concern about shoeing her on the back feet is whether I would be equipping her with weapons!  Alternatively I could try hoof boots again – I don't think Dee would make the fuss Red made about having boots put on her feet.

Past and present

Yesterday Dee was looking splendid and seems sound at last.  We both rode her a little in the arena and she was fine and seemed to enjoy herself.  I practised a few clover leaf patterns and transitions and she was responsive and relaxed.  This is a great relief.  The hoof that cracked is looking as good as it can until the new hoof grows through, and the hoof putty is staying in quite well now that they are in a drier pasture and the weather is also drier.

I'm a little embarrassed about her mane – or lack of it.  I always feel that cobs should be left to let their manes grow as long as they grow, but Dee's had become so uneven I decided to trim it all to the same length.  She'd had a bite or something half way down the top of her neck and had rubbed at it, so that she'd lost a chunk of mane there.  It is growing back well but it looked a mess with a long bit, then a short bit and then another long bit.  Now it looks odd rather than a mess... but it will grow again.

The second picture is somewhat historic.  My mother produced a camera that she had not touched for years but still had a film in it, so we got it developed for her.  This was one of two pictures on the film of Dee, me and my mother from 1995.  We still had Dee at Pontcanna Riding Stables at this time, but were getting rather fed up of the limitations of riding there, so we decided to take her out for the day.  This seemed reasonable at the time, but looking back it was a rather crazy idea and could have been disastrous.

We started very early on a Sunday morning so that the main road from the stables would be quiet.  The first problem was that she wouldn't cross this road.  We'd get half way across and then she wouldn't budge.  The only alternative was an underpass.  Having eventually convinced her that the white van in the supermarket car park was not a scary horse-eating monster, she surprisingly walked through the underpass as if she did it every day.  In the picture we are visiting my mother in Gabalfa Avenue where I had ridden Dee down the wide grassy bank in the centre of the road.  There were a few other scary moments during the expedition, but we got her back to her stable safely later that day.

It was an adventurous outing and perhaps we were foolish to attempt it, but it did convince us to move Dee from Pontcanna and this has been the best thing possible for Dee and for us.  If she was still liveried at Pontcanna she would have continued to be isolated in a stable for most of the time and on her own in a field for a few hours a day, whereas she now runs free with a herd of mares and geldings in 93 acres of beautiful pasture.  She would still have been spending most of her ridden time going round in circles in an arena, being agressive to the other horses and bored out of her mind, whereas now she finds occasional arena work interesting and most of her ridden work is out on the trail.  It was worth a risky ride to arrive at this point.

We are hoping to ride the Wenallt trail with Dee and Red tomorrow if I feel okay.  I have been very off balance and wobbly again today, so I hope it will be better tomorrow.

End of summer sunshine

Well I still haven't ridden either of our horses since the fun ride, but I am feeling a lot better. We've just had a week's holiday in Dinbych-y-Pysgod (Tenby) in South Wales, and I really think I must have needed the holiday.  My dizziness and lack of balance gradually subsided over the course of the holiday and now is simply a mild occasional inconvenience.

We had a lovely relaxing week in an especially nice apartment with a sea view and a little patio garden to sit out in and enjoy the sunshine – yes we did have sunshine, a whole week of it.  An unexpected treat of staying in this apartment was that the route of the Tenby horse carriage rides passed right by our little garden.  So I got to stroke the soft nose of a shire horse every day and offer him an apple, to compensate for not seeing Dee and Red for a week.

Red is fine as always and now a firm favourite with the herd leader, Falcon.  Dee started to object to being in the convalescent field as soon as she started to feel better and began trying to kick through the fence, so they decided she was better off back with the main herd.  She is no longer lame, but still quite stiff in her hind quarters.  I think it is time to start exercising her a little now to try and loosen her up.  The farrier has had a look at the hoof which had cracked so badly and has tidied it up.  He is satisfied that it is coming along well.  I'm cleaning it out whenever I visit and patching it up with hoof putty.  This does not stay in from one visit to the next, but at least it gives the hoof a bit of support for a while and keeps it clean.  It has been quite dry here for a while now, so there is not a lot of mud around to get it really wet and dirty.

Having had a couple of incidents with Dee messing me around while leading her in from the field, I have been using the training halter and a lunge line when I catch her.  Simply using these is sufficient to ensure Dee's cooperation and we walk up together calmly and happily without me having to do anything else.  She's a sensible mare and knows when to give up on mischief.

Postscript: if Cilla of Frontshoesonly still reads my blog, will you please send me an invitation to your blog because I can no longer access it.

Briwnant fun ride

Today was the Briwnant fun ride.  We arrived in good time to find Red in and groomed with Dee still out in the 12 acre field.  I went over to catch her, but found her reluctant to be caught.  I gently and quietly stayed with her until she permitted me to put on her headcollar.  She was still slow to come in with me however, and clearly not entirely sound.  Dee would not be going on the fun ride.

We decided in this case that I should go on the ride with Red.  Once we were assembled at the yard, ready to go, Red and Dee began to call to one another.  Although he was obviously excited, he seemed okay at first and walked out quietly enough through the first field.  The first part of the ride was a sort of cross country through the Briwnant fields with a few small jumps along the route.  The second part was to be around the Wenallt trail.

And so I discovered two things:
1. Red can jump... really jump...
2. when he is really excited he is too much horse for me.

We jumped the first three jumps—a single log, another single log and then a stack of three logs— without incident but I was already starting to realise that I was not really managing Red in this excited state. By the time we reached the next field I found myself riding a new Red that I had never experienced before.  He pranced and bucked and was pretty wild.  Apparently he looked quite magnificent performing a perfectly athletic, collected canter sideways as I tried to check him.  I hoped he would settle down as we carried on and took the route that avoided jumps for the next couple of fields and stayed with the slower riders. 

Then we came to the last jumps.  Here the choice was: to the right and a very small jump; through the centre and no jump; or to the left and a slightly higher jump.  It was still only 18ins – 2ft high.  Nicky on the herd leader Falcon, was taking the left hand jump and I had no choice but to allow Red to follow because there was no way I was going to succeed in taking him either of the other ways.  He took the jump too fast, too close to Falcon, and at an angle which meant he did a huge leap over this small jump.  He jumped it like a show jumper and I didn't stand a chance.  My treeless saddle isn't much more than a bareback pad which is great usually and how I like to ride, but I am not a good enough rider to take such a big jump and stay on, so Red and I parted company as he landed.  Fortunately the ground is quite soft there and I fell quite well, so I have not hurt myself.  I will probably find a few bruises tomorrow and I feel a bit stiff in my left shoulder.  They tell me that Red was quite upset that I had come off. 

I did not feel up to the rest of the ride as Red was so excited and I knew he was too much for me.  I'm so glad that it was me on him and not 'ö-Dzin.  I am not the fearless rider I used to be when I was younger, but I have ridden some pretty feisty horses in my time.  'ö-Dzin has no experience of such riding and may not have been able to hold Red even for as long as I had managed. 

We walked Red in circles whilst the rest of the ride carried on to help calm him, and then led him back to the arena.  I got back on at the arena and we walked him round a couple of times.  Everyone was very kind to me.  Red continued to call and be wound up until the rest of the ride returned and then he gradually settled down.

So there we are... not quite the 'fun' ride I had been looking forward to, but I think everyone else had a good ride.