Horses or Hippos?

You guys be the judges...

The poor starving creatures come when they see may on the off chance i might feed them
- Sorry Zephyrs...no such luck!

I finally got out of work at a reasonable hour today, so i zipped home, changed and legged it up to the yard, to play with the tanks - yep, you'll see from the unedited photos accompanying this post that the pair of my girls are the sizes of houses.

The flies & their sticking to the gate made body shots to show the full horror of the FAT difficult

I have managed to put three rides on Nancy since getting back to the, excluding the spin through the woods to get both girls back - yep life has been just that crazy busy - sad times!
She has been a sweetheart for all three of those spins, the first one we worked for a grand total of 20minutes I'd say & I didn't push the boat out further than walk-trot.
Second spin, we had one small canter on each rein for a circle and down the long side of the large indoor arena.

Cray-cray eye - spooky N ;)

Today i pushed the boat out a little further, we did a bit more work in walk, lots of diagonal changes of rein, figures of 8 & serpentines before doing some very nice trot work again fleshing out the same movements as we'd done in the walk before getting some very nice bursts of canter work on each rein. She got tired pretty quickly bless her as it was hot, so we kept it simple.

Post ride & flash - hence shiney shiney

Kika who is by far the heavier of the two, or at least Nancy is bigger boned so potentially carries the extra pounds better than Kika who is doing a wonderful imitation of a blimp ready to sprout triplets!
K has had three spins in the walker while I rode & looked after N (K spun for a good hour each time), I lunged her for 30 minutes on Saturday, 10 minutes of which was in the pessoa - other 20 were warming up and cooling down...bear in mind she had spent an hour in the walker beforehand also. I finally sat on her this evening and we covered the basics in walk and trot to re-engage the brain while not over-taxing the limbs which are carrier a hella weight! (as you can see from the photos).

Shiney McBright-Penney

Not only has work been keeping me uber-busy and out of the saddle, although thankfully not away from the girls now that they are closer to home - poo-picking & fencing counts as pony-bonding time right?!
But both girls badly need pedicures - K pulled her shoes while i was in Canada and as she wasn't doing much (I think she's been ridden a grand total of 10 times since May) I wasn't in a particular rush to call out the farrier to put shoes on when she was just trudging around a field and taking the odd spin into the woods. However since i moved them both back closer to the yard at the start of July - i have been trying to coordinate with the blacksmith to come sort them out as the are now way overdue & i am mortified by how bad i have let their feet get.
*shame-faced*

Fatty McHugerson

Appointment has been finally secured for friday evening, when both girls & I are hopefully going to be going into serious boot-camp/re-fitness mode.

I am actually going to set myself a goal for the rest of the month of July ... to RIDE MY HORSES & hopefully get us all back into shape! Yep - groundbreaking stuff here guys...here's hoping saying it "out-loud" by posting it on my blog accounts to some sort of accountability right?

If i can coordinate with the "new" trainer at my yard, I am hoping to start taking lessons with her. Hopefully one a week - alternating the girls if i can...The Guru has been the most wonderful help to me for the last 3-4years, but sadly our timetables no longer mesh like they used to and i am worried that if i spend too much time working on my own unsupervised i am going to end up boring myself and the horses while simultaneously ingraining all my even bad habits further!
Fingers crossed for things working out with this new trainer!!!!

RtR-BH: Support Group

Jodi over @RacingToRide has come up with what i think is a fab blog hop, a commemoration of those who support us in our unending quest for all things equine!

I'm on the left on my mother's old horse & my sister is on the right

I have shown in previous Friday Flashback posts [#1, #2, #3  & #4 - i really do mean to revive this feature!] that my mother was probably the chief instigator and her family were the happy enablers as they welcomed, with open arms, myself and my two sisters annually for the summer - to the family farm and let us play with the ponies.

My mother really only has herself to blame

My parents have been super supportive of my dream to own horses by helping me to purchase Kika as my 21st birthday present and later allowing me to move back in with them in 2010 when I got offered work in Luxembourg & brought Kika over from Ireland with me (and later Nancy). 

Nancy minding my Mama

My mam has even made a return to the saddle since Nancy arrived in Lux and has joined me to hack in the woods a couple of times. She is also a great help to me in keeping an eye on the girls when I am away traveling and/or caught in work. 

Family holiday in the South of France early '90s (I'm on the far right)

 My dad takes more of a passive interest in my passion, he allows me watch equine events on the TV and even calls me to tell me they are on if i haven't noticed and asks after the girls, visits sometimes with my mother but can't really distinguish them from other horses. He knows which is their field and which are their stables, but if other horses happen to be in those places I don't think he would realise they are not mine...if that makes sense ;-)

Baby Sister

My sisters are also super supportive, they listen to me prattle on about whatever adventures we have been up to and even hopping up for spins when they are around. They have both ridden both girls, but after Kika's less-than-stellar-behaviour phase, they both prefer to ride Nancy & I rather they do too. Although Baby Sister is brave and likes to ride Kika in the arenas, whereas I am more strict with who rides K out hacking on the trails - namely me or the Guru.

Sister closest to me in age is on Nancy -
taken summer 2013 before she moved to Canada

As I mentioned my mother's family have been longstanding supporters of my obsession, my aunt/ godmother bred my lovely Nancy and helped me buy and train Kika before we left Ireland. Her daughters also ride and in fact her oldest girl is now working with a show jumper in Ireland who buys and sells horses internationally. She spent a few months in Antwerp (Belgium) this spring with him & I got to see her when I went to the opening leg of the Global Champions Tour there.

Another gratuitous baby Nancy pic

My dad's side of the family are also supportive and inquisitive when it comes to the horses, but like him they are "townies" and none of them have actually met either girl as they do not live in the same place in Ireland as my mother's family so they didn't cross paths before I moved the horses' over here.
I talk to my grandmother one a week on the phone and she always asks after "Hamburger" & "Spain" - when Kika first moved here my dad told my gran that Hamburger had arrived safely & they don't see me any more - since then my gran calls K "Hamburger" whenever we talk - it's cute!
And well Nancy, is called "Spain" because of a song - i think...Is Nancy Spain part of a song?
Either-way another one of my dad's jokes to his poor mother that has stuck as the pair of them try to wind me up - joke is on them though; as it's a sure fire way to allow me talk freely about the ponios as they bring up the subject...not me! :p

The daughter of one of my colleagues riding Nancy for a hack last summer

 My friends and colleagues are all supportive in their own ways, some ask to come see the girls, others have had spins.
One of my good uni friends, who has also moved to work in Luxembourg (despite not having grown up here...guess what connection introduced her to Lux - sorry OTT) used to ride and owned a pony as a youngster - so she takes a pretty big interest & listens to me moan all the time.
My "city" school friends take an interest much like my dad's family and ask after the girls, but don't visit very often as we all know barns aren't always the warmest or nicest smelling places to hang out ;-)

My uni friend playing with Kika Summer 2012

Thanks so much to Jodi for this wonderful blog hop idea!
I have two posts in my drafts since last week to share with you all, but sadly I have been unable to wrangle the photos off my "old-school" phone to compliment the posts and now my laptop has also died, so I can really only access t'internet at work which as always is super busy :(
I am trying to keep an eye on your blogs - and really hope to get either the smartphone & laptop 
fixed or i shall be splurging on stuff i hadn't planned to buy this summer - either ay I hope to be back in technology'land real soon!

VCMBH: Interested Parties

Sadly I have missed a whole bunch of L. Williams' (@VivaCarlos) fab blog hops, but I am attempting to jump back on the bandwagon with this one - reliving the moments & things that attracted me to my current steeds.

So way back in week seven of this tortuously long blog hop I have going we talked about the Pros of our current horse. Some of us experienced these pros after buying our horse. Now I am curious, what made you interested in your current horse that lead you to buying them in the first place?

First picture I ever took of K on 21.4.2007 a week after her arrival

I first met Kika as an unnamed technically 3 year old in early April 2007 (her actual birthday is 25 May 2004) - she was quite wild on the lead rope as her breeder had separated her from the herd for viewing; she was walking around him (effectively lunging herself) calling to her buddies.
Auspicious start one might say, but what impressed me most about her was that despite her having nothing done - she settled down and took in the whole situation. She has a sweet soft eye - I am a firm believer in a good eye on a horse & I really liked what I saw in K's.
Nowdays I see way too much in her eyes lol - I missed all the intelligence she has on that first viewing, but that spark in her makes her undeniable - you cannot overlook her and she sure makes sure you don't ;-) She is such a clever clogs - way too smart for my simple mind

21.4.2007

She had absolutely nothing done when I got her, it took me months to get her to lead. I used to always have to bring another peson with me to the field to walk with us to keep her moving forward. Gosh now that i think back, it used to take ages to get her in - thankfully catching her was never a problem!
With my aunts help (she trained as a riding instructor and used to run her own Riding School - that is where I learnt to ride during my summers in Ireland...I really must resurrect the Friday Flashback series of posts sorry off topic) we trained her to be ridden, i think I have early lunging videos somewhere...

Love both my girls eyes

It has been a wonderful 7 years with many ups & some quite low downs - but I wouldn't trade her for the world!
(If i can resurrect the FF - I have old competition photos & videos of our time in Ireland to share!)

12.6.2009

It is hard to pinpoint exactly when I first met Nancy, methinks when the above photo was taken 4 days after her birth!
From the beginning she was a pocket pony, she was the sweetest foal I had ever met - I spent the 4 years of my studies helping out every weekend on the family farm where my aunt (retired from teaching riding) runs an equine foaling unit. So I was lucky to assist in foaling the mares and had lots of hands-on experience of the youngsters.

12.6.2009

Unlike K, Nancy had a thorough handling as a youngster as she was a companion to TB weanlings & later yearlings and went through all their sales prep with them. Her ground manners were beyond reproach and her kind & gentle nature was far and above any youngster I had ever dealt with - she would happily walk as often as needed to keep the TB upstarts calm in her company.
She was so sweet, always hanging over the stable door when people were in the barn and loved nothing more than to be petted - from the very early days I swore that if I had the means & she was still as gentle when she was older I'd have to come back for her.

After my first spin on her 25.7.2012

Thankfully this happened in 2012 - and the rest as they say is history; for the full story of how our paths crossed for good (I hope) check out the IOU and Intro post.

D-Day

Tomorrow is D-Day for the ponies, only they've no idea - especially as I haven't seen them since friday...talk about lulling the poor sods into a false sense of security. I got the green light to move them back to a field near my house/the yard + arenas!

The above photo is the reason I haven't seen the little darlings since friday - I have been at Rock a Field a 3 day music festival here in Lux. I was very sorry to miss Bombay Bicycle Club on friday but loved seeing Foster the People, Ellie Goulding, Foals & Skrillex were amazing yesterday. Saw Haim & Chvrches today and we're heading back later to see KINGS OF LEON! We did get drowned a couple of times yesterday, but that's all part of the fun of open air music festivals.

I did get a fun spin in on Friday, despite torrential rain after tacking up & just before mounting and Kika throwing a bitch fit as I ligned her up to mount from the horse box the rain really started hammering and the other two horses in the field started running like lunatics. So rather than get into a fight with her and get us both worked up; I hand-walked into the woods and mounted once she calmed herself - which was about 5minutes later. She is so silly!

Although she settled and we were on our happy hacking way for our last spin in these woods with my baby sister riding Nancy. Kika "accidently" whacked my knee off a tree as we scrambled up a bank following our river crossing. Thems the joys of happenings on horseback. It actually balances things out somewhat as my other knee had a run in with a gate a few years back before we left Ireland - now...who says my horse loves me? ;-)

Which got me thinking about Sprinkler Bandit's (sorry i can't link as am posting from my phone) post about riding alone and trusting our horses. Two years ago, K & i couldn't have recovered from her fit so quickly, nor ridden the rest of our hack on the buckle. She was wonderfully relaxed and led 3/4 of the way including down a trail she historically doesn't like.
I feel like we are finally in a good place where we both trust each other and know how to handle the other ones irrational mood spins. I am now better at handling her meltdowns and getting us back on track aka my agenda.
So far so good with Nancy, although she is now coming into her teen phase (5-7years of age) so i shall keep a closer eye on her under saddle behaviours so that i hopefully don't get caught out like i did with Miss K.
Fingers crossed i can keep us all on track as we get back into arena work with the pair of them.

Sacred Saddle Time :)

Yay for long weekends, the sister and the mammy!

Yep i got THREE spins in over the weekend, 2 with my sister Saturday & Sunday then another with my mother on Monday.
Family are the best and both equine girls were amazing too!

Nancy carted my family members around and I got to play with Kika, who was amazing and got braver each ride. The first one she was a right scardey cat & needed younger Nancy to lead the way a couple of times on our first spin.
She made me laugh out loud when I had her concentrate and she was solely focused on me , practicing her leg yielding, shoulder-ins and maintaining contact at the walk - it was too hot & the girls are too unfit to ask more of them. That when I took a wrong turn and ended up back on the same path going in the same direction but K was now on a loose rein - all the patches of sunlight & branches were suddenly terrifying and required the hairy eyeball as she hadn't seen them first time due to concentration. I LOVE THIS HORSE - she is such a character!

Hanging out in cool river water after first spin on Sat

Sunday's spin was a lot better, she was much braver and only threw a mini-spaz fit due to flies bugging her and as they are the bloodsuckers i don't blame her for almost tripping herself up by trying to scratch her head/nose off her legs - even if we were trying to trot so that we could get away from the wretched creatures.
Nancy on the other hand took full advantage of my sis being super sweet with her and took C for a walk rather than C riding her - they zig-zagged & weaved all over the place as K strode along on a loose rein wondering what was taking N so long.

Monday my mother joined me to take N for her spin as "Baby Sister" hadn't come home from her friend's house after Lux's National day (hence fireworks pics). The flies were absolutely horrendous this day so we stuck to the routes that we hoped would have us least affected - however the beggars still found my poor ponios, so shall have to dig out my "knight" horse fly rugs for riding in the future.

Kika was the best and bravest she has been to hack in the woods - marching ahead of N and on the buckle no less. N on the other hand dawdled trying to convince my mama that she was allowed mouthfuls here & there - the mama was having none of it but it was still a funny turn of events - no misbehaving but N was just chancing her arm (hoof?)

Actually an "old" photo - taken last week with those in previous post

I also got great news yesterday as the Yard Owner answered positively for the girls return to a field closer to the yard/arenas and thus my house - yipee! *happy-dance*
I just have to check the field this evening as YO is worried that there hasn't been enough growth since they cut hay off the field at the end of last month - but as you can tell from the size of my girls in the photos (they look like elephants/houses/pregnant with triplets - whatever you want to use to describe them has all been said by me of late) any lack of grass growth will be more of a blessing than a curse in my book! :)

Shiney & F-A-T!

No News

The saying usually goes that "no news is good news", dunno if that applies here but no news is deff not bad news so I'll take that as a win I guess.

Mama and N having a chat

I haven't managed to ride either girl since my last update as work has just been cray-cray & I haven't gotten out of the office before 7.30pm every evening!
Bah Humbug

However I have gotten out a couple of evenings to pet them, stuff them with carrots & slather their hoofs in the hopes they don't dry out & crack.

My "little" Nancy after our spin leading K a few weeks back

I'm really hoping I can get them back to a field near the yard at the end of this month so that I can get to them easier & have access to the arenas even if I've to work late!

Tardy Tidings

Where does the time be going?!
I have been back from my amazing Canada trip for 2 weeks and have been a very busy bee at work so sadly I have barely seen my girls. Although I have gotten a couple of hacks in, but really nowhere near how much I would like.

I did my first solo hack with both girls and they were angels. I ride Nancy & lead Kika, because despite being 5 years younger than Kika; Nancy is the more reliable ride in the great outdoors. She is such a steady eddie, a wonderfully calm counterpart to silly sod Kika. Plus K dozes when walking on the lead alongside another horse so she freaks out at things less (read hardly ever vs almost always when i ride her - gotta love her silly antics)
N was very cute and uncertain about tree trunks that had been cut and would slow down to gawk at them but when i closed my calves she'd bravely walk by while giving them a googly eye & a bit of a swerve.

Hacking with my two girls

My mother came for a spin on Nancy while i rode Kika on Monday (yay for bank holidays), it was roasting here this weekend and i sadly hadn't managed to ride either girl Sat or Sunday although i did have a sneaky sit up on Nancy bareback on Friday evening under my mother's watchful eye. It was my first time clambering up on N without tack - she wasn't sure what i was doing up there but dealt with it with her usual stoic'ness. We went for a 2-hour stroll in the woods to try and cool the girls down as the shade & water are not near each other in the field and the horses wisely stay near the water on hot days - but this means no shade...so we strolled in the shade of the trees for 2 hours passing through streams for fresh cool water - although neither girl would drink.
Funny bunnies!

As always N was a superstar for my mama, even giving Kika a lead past who knows what she saw on a path she has been on so many times there really wasn't anything to fear. But K stopped stock still & couldn't possibly take another step forward despite my legs, voice and schooling whip...on the upside she didn't put on the super reverse or threaten to rear, so major improvements on her "spooking".

K playing nice with my friend's dog

It may sound like i'm complaining about K, but i really am super proud of her and both of them in fact as they have had so little work the last two months the fact i can clamber up and go for a hack alone with the two of them or with someone who rides rarely (my mama) is a testament to their wonderful characters & level-headedness.

I am hoping to move them back to a field on the yard at the end of this month as that is 10mins walk from home vs 10mins drive. Considering the late hours i've been putting in at work (I have over 29hours overtime since coming back from Canada), i sadly don't have the motivation to haul myself out in the woods every evening.
I shall still take them both hacking at the weekends when we get back to the barn, but i will also have the option of doing arena work in the evenings - weirdly perhaps this is much more appealing to me after a long days work...yep, i think there is something wrong with me!

Also - in case you don't follow me on instagram - here is a LINK to see all the photos from my fab trip to Canada!
PS: my apologies to those who have already seen the photos in this post on instagram!
PPS: I must also apologise for my poor blogging & following, I really do hope to get caught up! I have to go back to April for some of your wonderful blogs *blush*