Bobbi C
28-04-2009, 09:15 PM
The weekend started with a busy friday. Waking up early for the farrier, moving Jones to her new home (that's another long story!) and a 6 hour drive to Kildare. We arrived in Coilog close to midnight and found there to be cows everywhere. The dairy show. Went to find Mia's stable, couldn't find the lights, eventually found them, and went back to get girly out of the horse box. to get to her stable we had to walk past a milking machine+loud generator with power washer. i thought she'd flip, nope, had a quick look then noticed the stable door open so she walked straight past them. Excellent!!
Saturday morning, i of course was late getting to the yard and karen was already there. Saw the most bizzare thing ever, a cow being lunged :eek: I still can't get over that, its insane! Anyway, Karen very kindly set about the challenge of tackling madame's locks and she made a faboloos job of it! And Mia even stood still for (most!) it. Horsey is earning serious browny points at this stage for her great behaviour. Had to change her stable from the old yard into the indoor. To do this meant walking past cows, people, ice cream van, and general chaos. Kind of dreaded it, but she just went exactly where she was asked, didn't bat an eye lid. starting to think at this point that someone has stolen my horse and replaced her with an identical but super behaved version. liking the new version a lot! Rest of saturday was general settling in. Worked her for a little bit to stretch her legs out and get some fresh air. She went nicely. She called out the whole time she was working, heaven forbid she might be forgotten, but she did as she was asked once again and got on with her work.
Sunday headed over to the yard. I was a bag of nerves, Mia was chilled to the max and very much in love but playing hard to get with the massive gelding in the stable beside her :sniggers: Got madame ready and Laura and Chris arrived. Chris gave me a mild heart attack by asking if he could go into check Mia cause he thought he saw a flap of skin hanging off her leg but it turned out to be a shadow, my heart, oh dear god! Chris did an intro talk with the spectators before calling myself and Mia into the arena. Once again I was full sure that someone had swapped my horse as she was so well behaved for the whole morning. Chris went through basic physiology, psychology and how they are linked. He talked about how the slightest thing in how we move/act can be read by the horse. He used Mia to demonstrate all this on. it was amazing to see, that straight away she knew what he was asking of her and this was all through body language. He used this from in-hand work, to lunging to even just the simple (or so it would seem, but not so much with miss chronic ants-in-her-pants-itis Mia) of standing still. Brilliant morning. Horse was a pure darling.
After lunch was the clinic, it was myself and 2 other girls along with their horses. One girl had a gorgeous warmblood mare, ooh she was fab,but straight away you could see she was a stressed out bunny. The other girl had a big skewbald cob type gelding, he seemed, i dunno, fine is the only word i can think of. Chris worked with us all through in-hand stuff and lunging. This is something i really need to work on. I can lunge, obviously, buti kind of tend to go all over the place, i'll start at one end of the arena and end up down the other end. No idea how i do it. So I was told to focus on my own circle not on Mia's. Just keep contact with her, have my position right and all would be ok. took a while but eventually we were lunging staying in the one place and horsey going really nicely. Then came the riding part. This is when the fun started and my horsey came back to me :sniggers: Got up on Mia and straight away I could tell that she had just had enough at this point. I asked her to go forward and she shot backward on me. Chris told me to open my reins out as wide as i could go, but keep contact with her. He set me the exercise of keeping my centre perfectly in line with Mia's centre. basically I had to keep my bellybutton perfectly in line between Mia's ears. when she bent i had to bend, when she was straight i had to be straight etc etc. i walked her up and down the quater and half lines and she did start to relax. Until we were walking along the boards and the warmblood mare was passing us, the mare was bending inwards as she passed us, so she was bulging out towards myself and Mia (if that makes sense!) Mia spun her butt around and threatened to kick. Chris explained from Mia's point of view the wb mare was threatening Mia by trying to force her into the boards, now the mare wasn't actually trying to do that he explained, but Mia was feeling sensitive at that time as was highly aware of what the other horse was doing and was letting her know that she wouldn't be pushed around. At this stage i was so tense that you could've broken a concrete block over my back. i rode her around for a little while longer but considering i couldn't get myself to relax i decided it was best that i dismount. the clinic was actually finishing up at this stage but i'm glad i made the decision. I could feel the potential for an explosion in Mia and I knew I was not helping her being in the saddle so i walked her around in hand for a while.
We were all talking outside Mia's stable afterwards and everyone kept coming up to me saying how impressed they were and saying they certainly would not have ridden Mia for so long in the tizzy she was in. Chris said he was happy with how i dealt with it, and that i knew Mia's limitations and what should/should not be done with her and when. He said there's a lot to be done with Mia (which there undeniably is) but from what he saw I can do it for sure. The day then ended in a big hug from Chris!
It was a brilliant day. There is loads that I haven't written about cause I only saw/heard snippets due to miss busy body so Peadar might fill you in on some of the incredible stuff that Chris did. I've already decided that i'm going to watch his clinic when he comes back during the summer. He was very clear in how he explained everything, he was fascinating to listen to and talk with and was very reassuring.
Brilliant weekend. I'm so proud of Mia, she was so so good for the whole weekend. She worked so hard on Sunday (we'll forgive the little tizzy!). Here's hoping that 5 is going to be her year!
And can i just add thanks do much to Peadar for driving myself and Mia up and back from Kildare. It was not an easy drive. I really really appreciate it :bighug:
PS sorry for the major essay, fair play if you got through it all!
Saturday morning, i of course was late getting to the yard and karen was already there. Saw the most bizzare thing ever, a cow being lunged :eek: I still can't get over that, its insane! Anyway, Karen very kindly set about the challenge of tackling madame's locks and she made a faboloos job of it! And Mia even stood still for (most!) it. Horsey is earning serious browny points at this stage for her great behaviour. Had to change her stable from the old yard into the indoor. To do this meant walking past cows, people, ice cream van, and general chaos. Kind of dreaded it, but she just went exactly where she was asked, didn't bat an eye lid. starting to think at this point that someone has stolen my horse and replaced her with an identical but super behaved version. liking the new version a lot! Rest of saturday was general settling in. Worked her for a little bit to stretch her legs out and get some fresh air. She went nicely. She called out the whole time she was working, heaven forbid she might be forgotten, but she did as she was asked once again and got on with her work.
Sunday headed over to the yard. I was a bag of nerves, Mia was chilled to the max and very much in love but playing hard to get with the massive gelding in the stable beside her :sniggers: Got madame ready and Laura and Chris arrived. Chris gave me a mild heart attack by asking if he could go into check Mia cause he thought he saw a flap of skin hanging off her leg but it turned out to be a shadow, my heart, oh dear god! Chris did an intro talk with the spectators before calling myself and Mia into the arena. Once again I was full sure that someone had swapped my horse as she was so well behaved for the whole morning. Chris went through basic physiology, psychology and how they are linked. He talked about how the slightest thing in how we move/act can be read by the horse. He used Mia to demonstrate all this on. it was amazing to see, that straight away she knew what he was asking of her and this was all through body language. He used this from in-hand work, to lunging to even just the simple (or so it would seem, but not so much with miss chronic ants-in-her-pants-itis Mia) of standing still. Brilliant morning. Horse was a pure darling.
After lunch was the clinic, it was myself and 2 other girls along with their horses. One girl had a gorgeous warmblood mare, ooh she was fab,but straight away you could see she was a stressed out bunny. The other girl had a big skewbald cob type gelding, he seemed, i dunno, fine is the only word i can think of. Chris worked with us all through in-hand stuff and lunging. This is something i really need to work on. I can lunge, obviously, buti kind of tend to go all over the place, i'll start at one end of the arena and end up down the other end. No idea how i do it. So I was told to focus on my own circle not on Mia's. Just keep contact with her, have my position right and all would be ok. took a while but eventually we were lunging staying in the one place and horsey going really nicely. Then came the riding part. This is when the fun started and my horsey came back to me :sniggers: Got up on Mia and straight away I could tell that she had just had enough at this point. I asked her to go forward and she shot backward on me. Chris told me to open my reins out as wide as i could go, but keep contact with her. He set me the exercise of keeping my centre perfectly in line with Mia's centre. basically I had to keep my bellybutton perfectly in line between Mia's ears. when she bent i had to bend, when she was straight i had to be straight etc etc. i walked her up and down the quater and half lines and she did start to relax. Until we were walking along the boards and the warmblood mare was passing us, the mare was bending inwards as she passed us, so she was bulging out towards myself and Mia (if that makes sense!) Mia spun her butt around and threatened to kick. Chris explained from Mia's point of view the wb mare was threatening Mia by trying to force her into the boards, now the mare wasn't actually trying to do that he explained, but Mia was feeling sensitive at that time as was highly aware of what the other horse was doing and was letting her know that she wouldn't be pushed around. At this stage i was so tense that you could've broken a concrete block over my back. i rode her around for a little while longer but considering i couldn't get myself to relax i decided it was best that i dismount. the clinic was actually finishing up at this stage but i'm glad i made the decision. I could feel the potential for an explosion in Mia and I knew I was not helping her being in the saddle so i walked her around in hand for a while.
We were all talking outside Mia's stable afterwards and everyone kept coming up to me saying how impressed they were and saying they certainly would not have ridden Mia for so long in the tizzy she was in. Chris said he was happy with how i dealt with it, and that i knew Mia's limitations and what should/should not be done with her and when. He said there's a lot to be done with Mia (which there undeniably is) but from what he saw I can do it for sure. The day then ended in a big hug from Chris!
It was a brilliant day. There is loads that I haven't written about cause I only saw/heard snippets due to miss busy body so Peadar might fill you in on some of the incredible stuff that Chris did. I've already decided that i'm going to watch his clinic when he comes back during the summer. He was very clear in how he explained everything, he was fascinating to listen to and talk with and was very reassuring.
Brilliant weekend. I'm so proud of Mia, she was so so good for the whole weekend. She worked so hard on Sunday (we'll forgive the little tizzy!). Here's hoping that 5 is going to be her year!
And can i just add thanks do much to Peadar for driving myself and Mia up and back from Kildare. It was not an easy drive. I really really appreciate it :bighug:
PS sorry for the major essay, fair play if you got through it all!