Weird Week

Last week was a bit of a weird week - thankfully L had the week off work to move into her new house...Oh the excitement! But what this meant for me was that I could utilise my lunch breaks to eat and catch up with colleagues & non-horsey friends - rather than make my mad-dash across town on the buses to turn out ponies on my lunch break.
However that is not what made last week weird, what was weird was that between one thing and another I didn't get much riding done at all - in fact my backside was only in the saddle Monday evening (Kika) and wasn't back in the saddle until Sunday when I got to sit on both girls again.

L was, as always, an absolute angel and would take Kika for a walk in the woods when she was hacking her own mare. She also had a spin on Nancy on Wednesday to check out the steering - she agreed with me that she wasn't as well behaved as she had been the previous time she rode her. Nancy, like all young horses has her up and down days. For example, Sunday was a very good UP day - but last night (Monday) a bit of a down day...baby steps and it'll all come together. :D
So while Nancy and I have our disagreements about her gritting her teeth and/or locking her jaw when we are working, she really is a great girl for such a young greeny baby (see below for drama she hasn't batted an eyelid at while being ridden)!

Blacksmith was out this morning, so I had morning off work, bit of a lie in = happy days!
Kika has her new front shoes with tiny stud-type things to stop her slipping on the concrete - and Nancy had all four shoes taken off. We are going to try her barefoot and see whats he makes of it. Considering her first set of shoes were only put on in November/December I don't think she got too accustomed to them - but we'll keep a close eye on her feet and make sure they don't get too small or wind up hurting her. Bless her cotton socks, she's a bit of a martyr, looks like she had a small abscess/reaction to where the nails were in one of her front shoes - so methinks she might be happy to be barefoot again. However blacksmith said she has quite flat feet - so we'll keep a close eye on her and make sure being barefoot doesn't negatively affect her hooves!

Saddle fitter is coming back this evening with my GP which has come back from Stubben in Switzerland - not sure if I'll be riding in it this evening though as it has been altered to better fit Kika, but she wasn't 100% sound when i sat up on Sunday. She was fine in walk, and good to trot on her "bad" rein, however was quite sore when asked to trot on her "good" rein - so I mostly stuck to walk work (seeing as we were tacked up and in the arena) - got plenty circles, volts & serpentines worked on in walk, which makes a nice change for us as I tend to forget to work the walk and concentrate on trotting - SHAME ON ME!
I had hoped to pop her on the lunge last night to see how she moved from the ground - but I ran out of time. I don't feel too guilty about this though as herself and Nancy take it in turns to join L's horse O in the turnout area for the afternoon/days and yesterday was Kika's day outside so she wasn't stuck in her stable all day.

Things to add to the "Nancy" isn't bothered by when being ridden list:
- Snow melt falling off the roof
- Horses managing to get out of the cavesson while lunging
- Horses bucking on the lunge while she is being ridden alongside them

She is such a good girl when it comes to 'surprises' under saddle that you'd almost forget she's so young - the other one can be considerably less sensible.
Nancy is cool as a cucumber!

My sister is back for a week and a bit from Thursday evening, she will def be wanting to visit teh girls as she hasn't been abck since Nancy arrived. Hopefully I will be able to convince her to snap a few pics of us - as I feel terrible that the blog has been very wordy of late with no pictures to reward readers! I must contact the phone shop and see if there is any sign of my SIII!