As mentioned in previous post Kika experienced a suprise holiday for the last three weeks and between my being away, her pulling a front shoe and our farrier being MIA, there wasn't a whole pile to be done with her - which i can garantee she was not one bit sorry about,
Luckily she was still in the field during the day until the 1st of November when she moved back into her stable full time, she was still excercising herself until then - so well in fact that when released in the morning after a night in the stable she'd tear of down the field at a rate of knots bucking and farting like she hadn't been out in yonks not only in overnight, :rolleyes:

Anyways she got a haircut Sunday week (pics available in earlier post, ) and i got news that the farrier was going to come Thursday evening/Friday morning. Thankfully another farrier passed through the yard on Wednesday and I'd asked the RI before i heard from mine, that if a farrier was to pass through if they'd the time could they remove the three shoes K still had on in the hopes that i could at least work her without shoes in the soft arena sand till my farrier could come. I had been lungeing and loose schooling K, but had noticed that she was sensitive on the foot without a shoe, so preferred to take them all off where possible!
Turned out that the farrier got called away on an emergency on Thursday evening so didn't make it beofre the weekend and is in fact due out this evening - I have asked him to check Kika's feet and see if he thinks it might be feesible to keep her barefoot, so we'll see what comes of that.

Anyways, as always this post is getting longer than I'd intended it to be!

I decided to bite the bullet and get my backside back in the saddle on Friday evening, so i lunged herself in her tack for 20mins before i hoped up to walk and trot her around for a further 10-15mins circling and figures of eight in the smallest (and softest landing if worse came to worst) arena just to refresh requests. All went really well and best of all she wasn't sore for working without shoes,
Organised with my good pal L for a time for her to watch/guide us on Saturday, so that i could get back into the swing of things and start as we mean to continue work wise - mostly i needed a pair of eyes on the ground so that i wouldn't mess up the work we'd done prior to Kika unscheduled break!

Gave herself a bit of a lunge to limber her up before i was to hop up, while waiting for L who had been out for a hack in the woods with another friend. I was just getting up when she found me so timing was perfect, Was just starting my trot work on a circle (as another girl was lungeing in the top half of the arena) when one of L's dogs who were tied up outside the arena managed to poke his nose inside the door and scare the ba-jaysus out of Kika. With a sideways leap (which lost me a stirrup) two I'm-terrified-half-rears, probably some snorting can't really remember as it happened so fast, then some prancing trotting neck arched as i had her re-appraoch the gate to realise the little fluffy face was not going to devour her,
We returned to our trot work with minimal fuss (proud mammy moment for me!) ans swapped arena ends with the girl lungeing who was finished and walking her horse to cool down. Using the full arena then we had one more OMG-Freak-Out leap sideways from Kika when we passed the lungeing equipment removed from the other horse and hanging on the side of the arena, but no loss of stirrup for me this time and we calmly walked passed it once before returning to our trot work once more. I had only been intending to do walk-trot work with K, but was she was going so well L suggested we try some canter - which we did. Kika and I got into a bit of a disagreement whereby herself started bucking, but L explained that i was asking her to go too slowly and that Kika finds it difficult, so in order to get a calm canter out of her I have to push her forwards and keep her balanced at a faster pace. Once i had this tidbit of information canter was better from Kika even if i felt sligthly out of control, Odd to my mind is that although i have mentioned before how Kika has a good and bad rein, she typically tends to struggle more with work on the right rein, however her canter is worse on her left rein! Go Figure!
We finished up shortly after that whith some long and low trot work with an odd circle here and there to help her stretch out. I was over the moon with her and indeed myself (for a change), we still have plenty to work on but to come back after a 3 week break and pretty much pick up right where we left out is great for us! Even L was impressed with her calmness and even though we had the two freak-outs, she settled wonderfully again afterwards into nice calm, balanced work!

Sunday then we went for a nice stroll in the woods, Kika was bugged eyed and spooky for a lot of it, but to be expected really, , and aagin I came home with a smile on my face and well happy with my girl!

Thanks to whoever read this far, you deserve a medal for the mamonth read!