Tails From Provence
What happens when a horsemad Ould Wagon moves from Cork to Provence with 2 horses, 2 dogs and a Long Suffering Husband? Why, she gets a third dog, discovers Natural Horsemanship à la Française, starts writing short stories and then discovers a long-buried talent for art, of course…
Michelin Man?
The second visit to the pedestal.
You may remember, in my last post, I was quietly confident that I would succeed in getting Aero to put all four feet onto the pedestal at the same time. As I approached it, though, I began to have my doubts. Maybe I was being overconfident?
I set up the camera, balanced against a stone to keep it level. Took Aero around to approach the pedestal… and then this happened.
Aaaaargh.
For your benefit, I chopped out the four minutes of beautiful, but boring, blue sky that make up the rest of this video. Here’s the summary of what took place at ground level :
As Aero walked forward to cross the pedestal that first time, for a brief moment, he had three feet on it at the same time. Then he popped the front feet down onto the ground, keeping the back feet up. I praised him loads and thought “Yes, I’m sure we can nail this today!”
I turned him around and asked him to step up again. I took my time; didn’t rush things. I really think he understood what I was looking for, and just needed a little time to figure out where to put his hooves. He ‘offered’ his front feet a couple of times, but I said no, no and kept touching his left hind with the schooling whip. And, four minutes and forty-five seconds into the lovely ‘sky’ video, you can hear me say “Yessss!! Yesssss!! That’s my boy!”
Delighted, I turned back to the camera, to find it lying flat on its back. Frustrating, but no biggie… I set it up again, propped up against a much larger stone and with a stone in front wedging it in place. Off we went to the pedestal…
Aero stood up on it much quicker the second time around and after a couple of minutes I was back at the camera, ready to stop recording. Only to find that I had completely forgotten to press the record button when I set it up the second time.
Double Aaaaargh.
And worse, now I was out of carrots. But I knew there were a few carrots in a bucket beside the main arena, so I went and stocked up, came back, and finally…
Tada!
That was all we did on the ground today. I’d already ridden him for 45 minutes or so and I was really happy to quit on such a good note.
PS I also introduced Flurry to the pedestal this week.
First reaction was horror – “OH DEAR GOD WHAT IS THAT WEIRD THING BESIDE THE ROUND PEN????”
Second reaction was horror mixed with curiosity – “This is really bizarre, why on earth does she want me to come any closer to it than this?”
Third reaction was – “OHHHHhhhhhh. I get it -” followed by BOOM BOOM as two big hairy front feet were thumped down on the pedestal.
There’s loads more fun to be had with this yet!
She put me high… upon a Pedestal…
…so high that I could almost see eternity…. tra-lalala…. tra-lalala…
You probably need to be A Certain Age to remember that, but it seems appropriate to me!
I’ve been nagging asking the LSH for ages to make a Pedestal for me and my horsies to play with. Finally, it’s here.
Pedestal 1.0 as modelled by Cookie
I brought it up to The Farm on Thursday and introduced it to Aero. This was his reaction when he first saw it…
Oof. As you can see, he’s a real handful…
Anyhow, I set up the camera and we got to work. Here’s the result :
This will be ongoing…. I’m sure we can come up with loads of funky ways to use this and I’ll share the results with you.
If anyone is interested, I can post a few photos showing the construction of the pedestal. We are slightly worried that it will not hold a very big horse (think 700kg Friesan) so the LSH will probably reinforce it some more. I also need to tack on a rubber mat, as it is a bit slippery for shod horses.
How I almost entered an Interdressage test in April
I know I’ve been quiet here on the blog, but I’ve been doing stuff, really, I swear! This week, after introducing Aero to our new pedestal (yes, another post, I promise) I took him into the arena and just rode. Schooled? Messed around? I no longer know how to describe what I do…
I videoed bits and pieces on and off, and eventually rode a make-it-up-as-you-go dressage test. So here it is in its entirety, and tacked on at the end is a shoulder-in left. Yes I know it’s hard to make it out, because we’re just microscopic dots on the screen, but it looks like SOMETHING is happening. (There was also shoulder-in right, but somehow that was disappeared by the YouTube video editor. Boo.)
Anyway I looked at this video on Thursday evening and thought, Hey that’s not too bad really. Yes, technically his outline should be higher and the whole thing could be more punchy, but we’re relaxed, connected, harmonious… happy horse, happy rider. And I thought, great! I’ll record something for Interdressage tomorrow and send it off. I picked out the Fundamental Walk Trot Canter test 3. There’s a lot going on in that test, but it’s interesting, if only I could manage to remember it!
I arrived at the farm on Friday to find a substantial pebble lodged in the white line of Aero’s left fore. It came out easily enough, but it left a bit of a hole, and I felt I should round off his toes a little more. If the pebble had left a weakness in the white line/wall, rounding off the toes should help take the pressure off the weak spot. I worked away for about five minutes and straightened up. YEOWCH. The Back was not happy… never mind, keep going…
I tacked up, we went up to the arena and started walking around, stretching a bit and doing some sideways stuff. And Aero started coughing almost immediately. The dust? Or dusty hay? Who knows. And my back was not happy either. So I said, stuff it, and we went for a short walk through the woods instead. Where we saw a lovely green lizard and disturbed either a wild boar or a deer, which rustled violently beside us before galloping off into the distance. Aero’s reaction? Polite interest. Oh how he has changed!
Anyway, that’s why, once again, I did not enter an Interdressage competition this month. But here’s the video with some of Thursday’s work. (PS, I just realised that if you click Full Screen, you’ll get a HD version of the video. We’re still microscopic, but we’re slightly less fuzzy.)
If you’re interested in entering an online dressage competition, check out interdressage.com. There’s a nice Facebook community to go with it, too. Maybe I’ll see you there in May 😀
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Tails From Provence 