Winter! This winter!

The girls coming up to be fed.
Look! Schneeeee! Or neige, as I should say, in my current French state. I think I took this picture on the 1st November, so my last post about how hot it was neglected to mention that we'd had our first snow! The photo ponies are, l to r: Mae, Gracie and Amber, clearly not feeling the pose at that time.

Today when I went out to do the morning check it was -8c, so we're getting there!

The water buckets were all deeply frozen this morning so I went out with my bales of hay and my hammer and fed the horses and smashed their ice. When I went back a couple of hours later, they had refrozen, but Chelsea had kicked through her ice, Ella was in the process of kicking through the ice in the bucket in the big field, and Lilly had created a hole just about the size of her muzzle and was biting and crunching on the ice around the edge of the bucket. She's very enterprising!

Clipping has begun and Dee Dee and Tatoum, the two hairiest hardworkers are fully clipped out. It's nice to work normally and not end up in a gross sweat! Tatoum is still enjoying hardcore trails and also lateral work. She's working very hard at flexions to the left and I'm beginning extended trot and simple canter lead changes.

I'm working a couple of times a week with Dee Dee now. She's a 3.5 year old Kentucky Saddle Horse but she is not ridden gaited. She has a nervous mouth and tends to tuck her nose into her chest so she is being ridden in a combination of a bit and a bitless at the same time, so the signals are lessened on each area and she can focus on different sensations. I'm also working with her on listening to seat aids, as this effectively negates the need to pull on her mouth at all. In an ideal world, our horses would respond to tiny aids that were invisible to anyone watching. The tensing of muscles or an exhale. She is doing well.

Also doing well is Ella, who is also doing hardcore trails, although we had a blip where twice on the same trail she flat out refused to walk over a small ditch, having to follow another horse. Today though, we cracked it - literally, in the case of the icy puddles! - and she went over without a hitch. Ella has a new sense of self, it seems, with her increasing fitness and strength in her back. Where she used to be sluggish and uninterested, she is now prancy and has purpose to her paces. Her canter has improved to the point where she only pops out behind if she loses focus and spooks, and I do lots of medium size circling and straight lines with her to build this up. I recently learned how to ask a trained horse for a spin - thanks, Chelsea! - and the other day, as Ella has learned how to show a few steps of pivot, where she crosses the front legs whilst pivoting on the back, I put the rein to her neck at the halt and squeezed with the same side leg. Sure enough, she instantly gave me a few steps of crossover! I was thrilled, as I've never 'formally' taught her to neck rein, although we have done a little of turn on the haunches, as well as turn on the forehand.

My plan for her is to keep things easy, whilst increasing her strength and fitness. She won't be 4 until August, and she already knows a great deal, so I think it important not to keep adding things on to this until she has matured more. Over the winter I will work on the difference between tolt and trot, perhaps introduce some poles and logs to hop over, and do as many trails as possible.

Stormy the crazy has recently been clipped and become a barn horse. She'd gone through a good period but had rapidly become impossible to catch without coralling all the horses in the field at once and weeding her out! After that incident, she went straight into a single paddock and instantly became a 'please catch me!' horse, when she realised food came from the human! Her training is going from strength to strength, although of course she still has her 100% crazy moments, like being scared of a hose running behind her, or forgetting what 'over' means and then panicking, or a chain clanking on metal or, well, whatever scares her that day. But she's getting there.

Also, the big mare herd is much happier without her! With her, there were two distinct groups, her buddies, a momma and 3 year old daughter, and the other 3 Rocky mares. Stormy and her momma buddy would pick on the 3 girls and the girls would pick on the 3 year old. Now Stormy's outta there, there's harmony. The momma is the boss, the 3 year old is tolerated by the others, and there are no snake-faced attacks at the hay feeder. Bliss.