Welcome Back, Dr. Jekyll

I know some of you have been concerned about the way things have been going here.

Me too.

You never realise quite how pernicious a force anxiety can be until you find yourself deep in a worrisome hole and there seems to be no way to think yourself out.  Whichever way you turn, your own anxieties seem to be enthusiastically digging the ground out from under you.  And then there’s that feeling as if someone laced you into a Victorian corset whilst you were sleeping and you have his lump in your chest so leaden you can hardly breathe.  I think it’s called Fear.

In my last post I recounted how a session of groundwork and lungeing had gone horribly wrong and left Pom and I at teeth-grinding odds with one another.

It wasn’t something that I could mull over endlessly with the other half – there’s no way I could have paid it back in rugby analysis – and, honestly, the more I got stressed, the more I knew I was losing his sympathy as a rational, capable woman (or such is the rôle I pretend to play!).

So what did I do with my dark and shameful worry?  Blurted it out, I’m afraid.  Posted about it here, asked questions on equestrian forums, consulted with my more knowledgeable horsey friends and, generally, opened my eyes and ears to all good advice from many quarters.

But it did send me round in ever decreasing circles, because, of course, everyone has a different angle.

And as my knowledge of the possible causes for Pom’s sudden outburst of aggression increased exponentially, the more overwhelmed I felt by my own implication in the causes and doubtless inadequacy to redress the situation.   And the Fear started to bubble up repeatedly, like acid indigestion.  (This metaphor springs readily to mind as the possibility of ulcers was one of the first suggestions and lines of enquiry.)

To all of you whose advice and help I appreciate and respect, I’d like to thank you and let you know I’ve been looking into many of the avenues recommended (funds permitting) and there are still more I want to go into in the next few days and weeks.   All learning is good learning.   And if that isn’t a quote by some famous sage, I’ll claim it for my own.

But I also have a very sensible friend on the spot, who fixed me with a knowing eye and said, “He just needs riding”.

And, in a nutshell, she’s right.

We were taking up again after almost a four month layoff and the last two years has been an unfortunate series of stops and starts.  So it’s more of a wonder that I haven’t had more problems or just thrown in the towel, found Pom and the Pie a nice new home, and spent more time reclaiming the garden, finishing the gîte and planning a few foreign trips to ease me into my dotage.

But then I’m a stubborn cuss.  Maybe I’m crazy for carrying on the challenge, but then I shouldn’t baulk at the first fence.   Just because I still consider Pom and I to be a partnership, doesn’t mean he’s been longing to play all those loopy games the humans make up.   It’s been a cushy billet here after all.   Generally speaking, cantering over to the fence and whickering is all it takes to score a juicy carrot.

And it’s perilously easy to lose the work ethic;  there are so many excuses and it’s hard to know whether you’re being hard on yourself or easy on yourself when normal routines are interrupted by illness or injury.   But we all know the game is up if you let the Fear win.

So I’ve been trying to notice when the anxiety shallows my breathing.   And count slow deep breaths.   To step back out of Pom’s face.   Ask him little and reward generously.   Do things I know we both enjoy.   Ride the byways in the sunshine (when it shows its face) and laugh into the breeze.   And gallop when we can.

Loosen the reins, loosen the inhibitions, slacken that deadening, serious grip.   And enjoy.

The fitness, the schooling, the necessary hard work will come when we’re ready, I hope.

So welcome back, Dr. Jekyll.  We’ve had a few good rides together now and we’re feeling more like a team.

I think Mr. Hyde is that turbulent temper that erupts out of nowhere when Pom loses patience with human footling.  It’s up to me to keep him sweet and keep us safe.

 

 

Little example.   On our last ride out, we were cantering up a long steady incline when we found our path blocked by a fallen hazel sapling, too high to jump, too low to pass under.   Problem – and a long trek to go round another way.  So, after a bit of thought, I rode Pom right up beside it, leaned down and backed him up as we tried to drag the sapling aside, then I broke off the branches so we might be able to step over it.  It remained an obdurate obstacle, so, reluctantly, I dismounted, dragged the rest of the tree aside, led Pom round it then remounted.

It doesn’t sound like much, but when he’s agitated, standing still to mount is not a given.  With my left leg still not 100%, I’m always afeared of that split second when you’ve left the ground, but you’re not yet astride, when, if the horse decides to take off, you’re all too vulnerable.  (That was how I broke my leg in the first place.)

But he didn’t, we were fine and the boy was exceptionally pleased with himself for looking after me.   And the more experiences like that we share, the better our mutual understanding.

Thinking about his mercurial, but rare changes of temperament, it struck me that someone else very close to me had also been subject to sudden flights of temper.   Forgive the leap - my lovely but occasionally irascible father!   I thought I’d share this sudden insight with my husband.

“When Pom loses his temper, do you know who he reminds me of?” I asked.

“As it happens, I do,” he said.  “You.”

Character Forming?

This week the rain desisted, the sun came out and so did my mini, early daffodils.

Oh good, I thought, Spring can’t be that far off.  My grass arena and the country tracks should dry out and I can get back to work with my horse.

I found out he had other ideas.

There’s absolutely nothing I can do to alter the fact that in the last two years I’ve had three long layoffs due to accidents and operations.  And just when I was getting fitter last Autumn, a weird, inexplicable attack of vertigo meant that, for two months, I was unable to balance on my own two feet, never mind on a horse.  Then the rains came, and when it wasn’t raining, it was snowing….

So you could say our work ethic has been severely undermined!

This hasn’t stopped me spending as much time as possible with and around the horses, in their fields and in their boxes in the barn where they pass the winter nights, but the only time I ventured out on a hack with Pom this year, the going was so slippy, I decided the possiblity of yet another fun spell in hospital just wasn’t worth the risk.

There is also nothing I can do to alter my horse’s past.  If you’ve read earlier posts on this blog, you’ll know that Pom is a Pura Raza Española, or PRE, as Andalusians are now known.  Born in Tarragona in 2001, sold as a yearling, sold as a five year old, sold again nine months later and imported into France.  Thus far all his owners were male.  A year after his importation to France, he was bought by the woman who sold him to me.  She had, although she downplayed the situation, in effect ”rescued” him from a stables where he had had some kind of accident in which his rider had come off and he had been loose in a wood where his lower legs had been grazed and his left eye had been slightly damaged (there is a small cloudy spot, though he sees quite well on this side).  She had given him a good home and regular work, but her business commitments forced her to sell her two horses and move house.

Why on earth did I buy him, you might well ask?

I had been looking a long time for an Iberian horse;  a Lusitano (for several years I’d been riding a friend’s Portuguese horse after my oldie retired) or an Andalusian – and horses with ”papers”, in my (modest) price bracket and geographical area, were relatively rare, so I was prepared to give him a chance.

Long story short; I came, I saw, he conquered.  He came home a week later and in the early stages, I felt he was the Iberian horse I had been looking for – to fulfil my relatively simple requirements of pleasurable riding around the countryside and making modest progress together at dressage.

Getting to know each other should be the most exciting part of having a new companion. Under saddle, Pom showed himself to be bold and forward-going, virtually nothing phased him.  On the ground, however, that bravado made him apt to be a challenge.  Before he was able to fully integrate with our two older horses he was visibly an unhappy, insecure horse and he soon began to be a serious problem, biting and lunging at Aly and the Pie and also at me and my husband.

In the initial weeks I wouldn’t approach him without having something to put between me and him in case of danger, be it a wheelbarrow, mucking-out fork, lead rope or even a tree. It was winter and he was 8 when he arrived.  We’d had snow, so I was bringing the horses in at night and I thought being around Pom in the stable would help our relationship, but I found myself keeping a short length of branch handy, so if he was eyeing me nastily I proferred that for him to chew on instead of parts of me and that worked quite well.  He got the message and got used to the fact I wasn’t going to go away and that, often as not, food and I arrived at the same moment.

However, leading him in hand was awful;  even with the nearest hand right under his chin he’d still try to turn and bite and even to get ahead of you and turn back on you.  I tried leading from the right in case his impaired vision was causing trouble, but it made no difference.

By the time he knocked me over, jumped over me and gashed my head with his shoe, I began to be seriously unnerved and wondered whether I ought to get help or get rid of him.  I certainly made double sure to wear a helmet when leading him in future.

But, in the way these things tend to happen, whilst I was trying to decide what to do I carried on riding him, which was a joy, and handling him and breathing calmly and evenly to keep the misgivings down and disguised, and suddenly, it was better weather, and time to leave the horses out at night and at last they seemed to have negotiated a compromise between themselves and allowed Pom to settle in.

We appeared to have weathered the worst and over the subsequent months my worries subsided and we began to enjoy each other’s company.  Pom actually turned out to be more appreciative of stroking, scratching, rubbing and grooming (he very obviously appreciated treatments to calm his itchy mane and tail) than either Aly or the Pie.  In short, there was no more need for the chewing stick and we became a good team.

A year or so later I had a complicated leg fracture which took a long time to heal and left me much weakened, which in part was a reason for tripping backwards and breaking my jaw and fracturing my skull when around the horses, (on a stone wall or a hoof, I still can’t be sure which).  Since when I have been much more risk-averse and only fit enough to ride for relatively brief periods.  Though when I have, the Pom has scarcely been any different than pre-breakages.

And so back to this week.  I’ll make no bones (sic) about the fact that, because of our history, I have only done groundwork with Pom in very restricted situations where I felt safe and I have mainly side-stepped lungeing.

On Monday, after a dry weekend when I was otherwise occupied, I prepared Pom, mounted up by the barn and rode down to the school, where we had a ”bitty” but not entirely unsuccessful short schooling session.  One thing I absolutely love about this horse – however fresh he is - he has never bucked or tried in any way to dislodge me when under saddle.  However, getting him relaxed, balanced, even, and heeding downward transitions was never going to be a cinch.

What the heck, we needed to get back to some basics so, on Tuesday, I decided we should give lungeing another go.  It actually went better than expected, and we carried on with a few basic exercises on the ground until I saw he was getting frustrated and ”lippy”, so we finished on a good note (one rule I had imposed was respecting my space, so he is now a champion ”backer”!) and left it at that.

On Wednesday, my friend Kerri came to ride the Pie – as she has a couple of times previously – for a short hack out.  This has worked well before as there’s no separation drama for the horses (now Aly’s no longer with us to keep Pie company).  But the Pie is smaller, much older and slower than Pom, and he quickly became frustrated – not having seen the greater outdoors for a couple of months – at being restricted by his friend’s pace.

About twenty minutes into the ride, Kerri found the Pie faltering and, indeed, upon closer inspection, though his feet were clear and there was no heat or visible problem he was favouring his left fore.  A touch of arthritis in his hips and particularly in his shoulders was one reason he had been allowed to join the slightly older Aly in early retirement years ago, yet he had been sprightly and fit enough recently for the farrier and vet to give their encouragement for some light work (and Kerri’s definitely much lighter work than me).

Obviously we had to turn back for home.  Kerri dismounted to lead the Pie and I would have done the same, except the only way I could confidently control Pom was from up top. He’d sweated himself up into a state of frustrated over-excitement and it was all I could do to hold on to him.  It was not exactly the pleasant ride out we’d anticipated.

Yet by the time we got back he had calmed down and we decided to keep to the original plan which was to try loading the boys into the new (old) trailer, which I’d parked conveniently (yep, I’m slowly getting the hang of reversing!) and opened up in readiness.

After untacking and a quick breather we brought them round and Kerri took the Pie towards the ramp.  He was taking his time, but I didn’t think we’d have problems, as the Pie is generally quite amenable to persuasion.  I did however twig that, instead of positioning Pom by the forward, exit ramp to encourage the Pie up and through towards him, it might be better with Pom not far behind Pie, that being the usual herding order. Bingo! Pie onto the ramp and in without a fuss.

Pom’s turn and he took a little sniff of the ramp and strolled in like a pro.  This is the upside of his boldness;   nothing scares him.

I was so pleased with him as, to me, this trailer represents our main hope for future progress and it’s certainly been one helluva long time coming.

On Thursday, I had to go out to a legal meeting and a miss a glorious, bright, warm day for riding, but on Friday, I hesitated between riding out on my own and risking repeating an overexcited, stressful experience, or schooling at home again, or a little more groundwork. As the previous day had left me wrung out, I opted for the latter, much to my later regret.

I started by placing a couple of obstacles in the small area of field we were using (nearer the house than our ”school”) for us to do simple exercises of walking up to, around and between them, bending, stopping, backing;  just trying to get him more lightly responsive again to forward, halt, turn and reverse in different configurations and combinations, but even so, from the start, I sensed resistance.  Suddenly the softness went from his eyes and he went back to the behaviour I thought we had long overcome; trying to bite my leading hand, trying to get round in front of me, striking out with his forelegs (damn and blast training him for Spanish Steps).  So, reckoning he was bored and not comprehending why we were doing what we were doing, I aimed to send him off into a lungeing circle, but time and again he attempted to come back in, as a challenge, not as a join-up.  At one point I fumbled the rein and whip, and, seizing the advantage, Pom charged in at me and made to bite the back of my (helmeted) head. (I didn’t see all of this as I leapt aside, but I’d asked my husband to stay close at hand and keep an eye on us in case anything went wrong.)

I’m sure at this point we had lost all coherent communication and I was now dreading another trip in the ambulance, so I did the only thing that came into my mind as a solution – bear with me and don’t laugh – lunged him round a tree!  The advantage of this being that, in keeping me, him and the tree as a triangle, with the line forming one side of the triangle away from me to the ”base” line between the tree and the horse, if he started to turn in, I could prevent him doing so by keeping the line taut between him and the tree ahead of him.  Not exactly something you’d find in any textbook, but it did, finally, enable me to get my point across in safety.

A short while was enough for me to note that his eye had softened and his jaw relaxed and thus to feel able to approach him again and re-establish contact.  I did, however, feel bitterly disappointed that I’d confused or angered him to the degree where he felt he had to make his unhappiness felt by dangerous aggression.  I’d seen the resurgence of that little devil in him I thought we had exorcised years ago.  I also hated to feel the return of the fear I’d managed to put behind me and a loss of the complicity we’d built over three years.

That was yesterday; today it’s freezing cold and, intermittently, snowing again. I felt it better for both of us to have a day off to enable us to return to routine normality.

What conclusions to draw …..?

My gut feeling is that Pom comes from a breed honed to work cattle, fight bulls and parade their owners at the ferias.  He was bred, owned, probably broken in and worked by different men for most of his early life and (though it can be invidious to generalise) the equestrian culture of Spain is a far more machismo affair than that of Northern Europe.  He was probably treated strictly and learned to defend his corner.

He may only have been castrated at six, on entry into France, as in Spain many male horses are left entire, but French riding establishments do not welcome stallions.  He was also apparently shut in and left unexercised for a long while after his accident - which must have occurred not long after his arrival in France - becoming bored and sour.  He certaintly did not seem at all socially adept on arrival here, treating horses and humans with suspicion and sullen wariness.  Even after finding his place and feeling more secure, his tendancy is still to try and dominate.  In our very limited ”herd” situation, though he now defers to the Pie’s elder statesman status at a haynet, it doesn’t stop him herding and bullying his fieldmate.  He was also quite gratuitously aggressive towards a weakened Aly, who had been top horse before his arrival.

I knew from the beginning he would require firm but intelligent – strategic handling even, and I considered my experience and nerve sufficient to the task.  Even so, I was unprepared for the level of aggression he showed and have had to apply all my resources to upping my game and conquering his demons for both our sakes. His life is now secure, reasonably natural and content and his rules are few but clear and I suppose the hardest thing to endure yesterday was to feel that after we’d come through so much together, it felt like going back to zero.

An over-reaction, emotionally, as today he has been as good as gold to be around.  I suppose he has made his point in the only way he knows.

But I wonder what makes him so dislike being worked from the ground and lunged?

I dream of the day I might play freely with him at liberty as well as riding him ever better, but I know that until we are able to keep up a regular routine – with a trainer to advise – and put in much more work, that dream is going to remain, tantalisingly, just beyond my grasp.  But what do any of us get involved with horses for, if not to strive towards those slight but shining possibilities ……..

*****

A Postscript:

As regular readers will know, I am not usually to be found lacking a sense of humour, or, for that matter, using this blog as a soapbox, but I have had a gut-full of sick, tasteless jokes (even from friends) and ill-informed media comment about the horsemeat scandal in the UK.  I choose not to eat or buy red meat and, while everyone has the right to choose what they put in their stomachs now, it may not be the case for larger populations in the future.

For what it’s worth here’s my view.  It seems to me the present problem is twofold:

Firstly, government legislation, backed by local food inspection should have safeguarded that if you buy a product labelled “beef”, that is what you get.  The proliferation of European legislation and the monopolising tactics of the multinationals have closed local abattoirs, butchers and grocers and made the standards for farmers so exacting that the supply chain for cut-price, processed food has lengthened to the point of untraceability.  Hence illegal operations have been able to make a mockery of governments and consumers.  The only way to fight back is to buy local, demand quality and pay the price for good food even if it means making other economies and, if there’s any way you can ….. grow (at least some of) your own.

Secondly, the scandal of live transport of horses has still not been properly tackled.  And there are far higher welfare standards for farm livestock destined for the plate than for equines; old, unfit and unwanted, who end up in the food chain.  Presently, though it’s distasteful to me personally, there is a demand for cheap meat and a need to dispose of an excess of horseflesh.  The only way I can accept a justification of any consumption of any mammalian (or other) meat is for animal breeding, welfare, transport and slaughter conditions to be beyond reproach.

If you couldn’t look your food honestly in the eye …. then don’t eat it;  I’m sure we could all agree on that!

The Winter Waltz

When most people think of the South of France – at least those that don’t live here – perhaps the first images that come to mind will be of deep red wine and brassy sunflowers

charming, higgledy-piggledy villages basking under an azure sky and lazy lunches on shady terraces ….

And you wouldn’t be wrong. These are just some of the many reasons why France is the most visited country in the world and why people like me have been seduced to leave their colder, greyer homelands to journey south and stay.

But, as in any attractive tourist destination, the people who live here all year round – and often survive by purveying and perpetuating the dream from one holiday season to the next – see a very different side to their area out of season.

Most places the well-off go on holiday, the less-well-off live in relative isolation and dare I say it, pleasant tedium, once they’ve gone home. Villages echo like ghost towns.  Shops, restaurants and cafés often take an extended break;  the festivals and fêtes, dances and displays pack up and hibernate once the sun has dipped in the sky and life becomes ordinary and humdrum, just like any other rural place.  And mostly, I rather like it like that.

For me, the greatest joy of living down here in the south-west was the wonderful climate, with four distinct seasons, the coldest being the shortest, and almost enjoyable for being so.  The sweetest – the ”bel arrière saison” – the beautiful late season, when a clement late summer seemed to last almost until Christmas. The garden would revive after the heat of high summer and the long, low rays bathed autumn evenings in a golden glow. Winter was usually a short, sharp blast, then spring would start early and ripen to a glorious garden riot in May. Summers were reliably sunny and hot with a rainstorm every couple of weeks to refresh the air, which was ideal for the summer lettings we used to do back then.

And, as a bonus, the climate in the nineties and early years of the twenty-first century was well suited to keeping horses.

When we bought our first horse here, in summer 1990, we had 25 acres of land, but only about an acre of it was fit to be called grazing. Over the long years, in our spare time, (aside from renovating our own home, restoring houses for other people for a living and letting our house to holiday visitors in the summer!) we cut back overgrown scrub and thickets to bring farmland, long abandoned to nature, back into use.

Eventually we had several acres of decent grazing and woodland fenced off for the horses and they always had enough shade or shelter. For the sharpest of cold spells I asked a friend to bring me a rug from England as there were none available locally. It was a classic, green canvas New Zealand rug with a wool lining, which Aly probably wore thirty-odd times in his life. By the time the Pie arrived, they had a polytunnel-like shelter in the woods which they occasionally used, (Aly never used the first shelter we built, probably in the wrong place!) and as the Pie grew a winter coat to resemble a flokati rug, he was fine without a blanket.

For the kind of riding I did, with no chance of, or incentive to compete, it was easy to let the horses lead a very natural life, charging up and down the wooded ”terraces” cut into the hillside by some ancient farmer to get to their various paddocks, which we changed with electric fencing to preserve grazing and keep the boys from pigging out! Accidentally not too far from the notion of ”Paddock Paradise” astutely developed by Jaime Jackson.

But now our climate has definitely changed.

In more recent years our summers have been drier and our rain has come in longer spells in spring, autumn and winter. And then we have had more and longer harsh spells in winter which seems to begin sooner and end later.

As Aly and the Pie got older, we cleared space in our lovely, old stone barn and built quite rustic loose boxes. (And that’s another story entirely – if you’ve spent much time in French ”Brocantes” you’ll have an idea of the sort of things we found and couldn’t bring ourselves to throw away!) Initially we used the boxes when Aly had bouts of colic, then with the longer and snowier spells of weather, the more we were bringing the boys in most nights in winter. A further box was added when we bought Pom, blankets were bought for extra cold days outside and extra cold nights in the barn and soon our easy, natural way of horse-keeping got a lot more complicated.  And I haven’t even got going on feeding and shoeing!

And so we do the winter dance. Blankets tonight or not? Is it going to sleet or snow? Outdoor lightweight or heavyweight blankets? Will they get too hot if the weather warms up while we’re out shopping? Shall we bring them in until the blizzard stops? Ah, there is more too-ing and fro-ing than the hokey-cokey.

This next week’s weather forecast is another mix of snow and sub-zero temps. and warmer wet days. Frankly I’d rather be dancing to the Rites of Spring!

Meanwhile the odd treat keeps up equine morale ….

How are you and your animals coping with winter conditions?

Home Alone

(……….Or How Two’s Company, But Three Isn’t Necessarily A Crowd.)

Today we tackled a ”First” that I’ve been putting off for a while.  Taking Pom out for a hack and leaving the Pie behind ….On His Own.

The last time the Pie was left behind he ploughed through several electric fences as though they were strands of candy floss.  But that was many years ago, when he and his new best friend Aly had just moved in together.

As I’ve written before in “The Other One “, the Pie came to us entirely of his own accord.

His “family” built a new house about half a mile up our lane and no-one seemed to ride him.  They were occupied with finishing their house and moving in and a new baby was, increasingly evidently, on the way.  He seemed well fed and looked after but he was obviously a sociable type and desperate for company.

It became a regular occurrence to find the Pie standing next to my horse’s fence, content just to be near another equine.  He seemed to accept his fate with a long-suffering sigh when I slipped a headcollar over his ears and trudged him back home.  Then, a day or so later, he’d boomerang right back again.

Inevitably we got to know the family.  The pregnant woman had been a professional horsewoman and made sure we knew it.  She name-dropped the famous riders she’d worked for or rubbed shoulders with.  As she told it, she’d been the mainstay of a variety of riding establishments;  most recently at the château of a well-known, local millionaire who kept a string of horses to entertain his rich and famous friends and clients.  Florence had photos on the wall of herself with Tina Turner and Richard Gere, as well as sailing over a massive oxer at a national show-jumping competition.

The Pie, bless him, is a relatively small and not at all showy kind of horse, whose virtues are of the homely variety, so he was of no interest whatsoever as a mount for Flo.  With disparaging reference to his riding school past, she referred to him as a “transport de viandes” – a meat carrier!  He had, in fact belonged to the partner’s ex-girlfriend, a rackety sort of girl who had airily discarded both the Pie and the partner.

He was now kept as a pet – maybe a possible future ride for the children.  To  catch him, the partner used to chase him round the field waving a halter, which, after he’d given up the chase, he threw at the Pie as he galloped off into the distance.  These many years later, the Pie will always move away swiftly if you suddenly raise an arm.  (Though in all other aspects, he really is good as gold – if occasionally a surprisingly canny “bear of little brain”!)

When the small field beside the new house was sold as another building plot, Flo and partner readily accepted our offer to keep the Pie with Aly for company.   Aly, who had always been quite self-sufficient, eyed the Pie with resignation and welcomed him with a bite on the bum.  The Pie squealed happily.  He was home.

A while later, his owners needed the money so they decided to sell the Pie to an acquaintance who wanted a “lawnmower” for his large garden ……of course we offered to buy him, refusing to believe that the Pie had suddenly acquired a value above rubies.

Now the Pie was ours, he taught my husband to ride and was a lively mount for more experienced friends to accompany Aly and I on country rides.  On the other hand, there was no way we could go out without him:  the Pie wouldn’t let Aly out of his sight.  No fence or shelter could contain him and at that time we hadn’t built the boxes in the barn.

As Aly got older and wheezier, I rode less and less and finally he and the Pie were free to live the life of Riley, untroubled by all the bothersome saddles, bridles and paraphernalia dreamed up by us humans.

Two was good company for around ten years.  And then there were three.

A lot of people, including Flo, felt they ought to inform us – not that we were asking anyone’s opinion – that three was bound to be difficult;  a Crowd.

But once Pom had decided to unpack his bags (and baggage) and settle down, the three geldings got on remarkably well together.   Pie took a shine to the handsome newcomer and recovered some youthful verve.  While they fooled around pretending to be colts, Aly was able to keep his own counsel and snooze in a shady corner to conserve his strength and breath.  And when I rode Pom, who was always good about going out alone, Aly and the Pie reverted to their old partnership.  Pie would holler for a while but showed no inclination to follow.

But now, Aly is gone and we are back to two again.

Before Christmas, Eric wondered out loud if he could ride the Pie again.  Our vet and farrier agreed that a little light work might do him more good than harm, so I asked Kerri, who is almost Kylie-sized, to saddle up the Pie and join Pom and I on a couple of short, gentle trial rides.  It was a treat to see his little face light up at being out and how game he was to go.  Kerri rode him very tactfully but it was obvious that he wouldn’t be capable of much greater mileage, even with “Bute” and especially not with Eric up top.

So, it had to be tackled.  Leaving the Pie  Home Alone.

Dank, mizzly, slippery weather has been the dish of the day for the last few weeks with hardly a shard of sunshine to bolster our better intentions.  So it’s been easy to procrastinate, especially since the other three of us weren’t at all keen to push the issue.

Today dawned a little brighter, so I tacked Pom up and Eric led the Pie into his box in the barn, with eye-high walls.  Short of making like a springbok or breaking through like a rhino, Pie would be a pampered prisoner with a huge hay-net and an on-hand treat dispenser - Eric.   We kept all this as cool and calm as possible, (though I cursed I’d forgotten to buy some “calmer” to put in his feed) and with a minimum of fuss, I hopped on Pom and off we went.

We took our shortest, kilometer, round-the-block ride, phone in pocket in case of trouble.  Pom was fresh and keen to race, but conditions underfoot were slippery as eels and we kept a steady pace to get back quickly and safely.

We were home within twenty minutes,  despite stopping every few minutes to listen out for neighing or frantic hoofbeats!  Pie had wailed and kicked the door, but as soon as we hove back into sight all was well.

A promising “First” for this budding year.  Next hurdle – into the trailer ……..

Backing Gingerly into the New Year

Many people involved with horses may not think twice about owning and using a trailer.

For me it’s been some kind of holy grail.  Ever since I had my first pony!

My friend Sarah and I used to get up before dawn, bicycle two miles to the farm where our ponies shared a field then ride them back home to start grooming, plaiting them up, putting on our best jodhpurs, ties and jackets and hacking five or more miles to the nearest gymkhana.

There we would always see twins Sophie and Charlotte, identical of long blonde hair and immaculate show pony descending from their shiny trailer, cooler than a fridge-full of cucumbers, to bag all the best rosettes.

Fast forward through many years when horse transport never seemed to get high enough on the list of financial priorities.  Of course, it’s no small investment to buy a trailer, even a second-hand one, so you have to be pretty serious about your riding to set aside the money and it’s a really hard sell to a partner who can think of a bucketload of far better things to spend it on.   (“So you’ve got the horse, what more do you want?…..”)

Anyway, enough of all that, because the decades-long wait is over and all good things come to she who bides her time, eventually.  My own shiny trailer is here!

Ah, I love it!  Battleship grey, nice and anonymous, with a front ramp, which is the most prevalent type in the UK but a rarity in France (it’s a Richardson Original, an English make;  anyone else out there got or had one?), and I much prefer to lead the horse out walking forward – I daresay that’s a novice’s preference!

Today I gave it a full “valet” service;  a good scrub and polish, and, like you do when you wash the car properly, I got a good chance to look at every part of it in detail.  (It’s been a monsoon Christmas here so the trailer’s been mostly living under a tarp since we got it!)  What I was really pleased to see was that it appeared to have been deftly but subtly reinforced in all the places that count.

The floor has been replaced with the non-rotting, man-made flooring used in more modern trailers (it’s 17 years old);  and both inside and out it’s good and sound.  Reassuring to know that it was previously owned by the Bordeaux mounted police who had obviously looked after it well, and still had stickers all over the back, which I painstakingly peeled off, after thinking about it, as I prefer not to be “the woman with the police trailer”.   My trailer débuts in public will be testing enough without drawing attention to myself!

Just before Christmas I cleared out an old stone outbuilding – ok it still needs a roof !- but it will be the ideal place to house the trailer.  However the access is not quite straightforward.   We spent a comedy half-hour trying to back the trailer in, just ending up in failure, frustration and spinning wheels churning up mud (and turning the air blue!).   So the first fine day this week we took the trailer down to a village car park, unused during the holidays and practised backing the trailer.  Left, right, wiggly, straight …

A man in a neighbouring house came out into his garden to, very unconvincingly, hang a sheet on the washing line:  he must have wondered what the hell we were up to!  Luckily there was no one else about to witness the very slow process of us getting the hang of reversing.  Little by little we got the feel for it, (husband, obviously, was far better than me). I’m not looking forward to doing that in front of anyone else, but it’s got to be done to get us on the road.

Next step:  getting the horses in ….. but are they both of the same mind?

Our very best wishes for 2013 to you and your loved ones

“BONNE ANNEE”

One Door Closes, Another Opens…

Before I go any further, I want to thank all of you who read and responded to my last post.  Losing my lovely old horse hit me hard and the genuine sympathy offered by my blogging friends was truly touching.

Now, more than a month later, there are not quite the same pangs walking past his empty stable and I’ve tried to put away things that were specifically his that might catch us unawares, though you can never be sure.

Years ago we lost our first black cat.  She always loved to lick out the last of a cream tub and would emerge from scouring deep to the bottom, her whiskers a cream-tipped halo and a huge Cheshire Cat grin on her lips.  The first time I used up a carton of cream after she’d gone, I just turned to my husband, the empty tub in my hand and we both cried our eyes out.

Sometimes sadness is in the little details.

With Serin, there are still people who don’t know, who ask us how the horses are and, in telling them what has happened, our voices break and the sadness comes gushing back. We’ve pinned up lots of photos of him around the house.  But I never realised before how few were a true likeness.  Most were moments like this!

(If it’s confusing that I’m suddenly referring to Serin, his real name, instead of Aly, it seemed somehow wrong to speak of him so impersonally and use his ”nom de net” now he’s gone.  When I started the blog,  I gave all three horses nicknames based on their colours.  ”Alezan”,  the French  word for chestnut is redolent of Arabian magic and ”Aly” seemed to suit him better than Serin, the name of a little yellow bird!)

There are, however, ways and ways of missing Serin.

A couple of weeks ago I didn’t secure the fence properly and Pom and the Pie went walkabout.  We didn’t realise they’d got out until we saw them canter past the kitchen window.  It didn’t take long to catch them – it was almost suppertime, nearly dark – but they seemed very sweated up and excited to say they had just got onto the lawn and headed for the lane.  I couldn’t check until the next day, but as I barrowed leaves down to the far end of the flower and veg. garden, out of sight of the house, I saw the hoofprints -  hundreds of them.

They must have spent a good half-hour racing round the meandering grass paths and the carefully gravelled parterre, keeping off the flower beds and avoiding the shrubs and hedges, (thank goodness).  But had Serin been there too, there would definitely have been devastation.  Much bigger and clumsier than the other two, he would have panicked and not given a second thought to running through a hedge or a pond.   A first uncomfortable thought. But was it disloyal of me?  I love my garden - I love my horses more, for sure, but I’d have hated to see it trashed.

(Precious about the garden …. moi    … this is a Long Before photo!)

Another uncomfortable, disloyal thought.  There is less worry.  We don’t feel we have to check on the horses quite so often as we used to in case Serin had gone down with colic again.  He must have suffered thirty or more colics in his lifetime and we were always on the alert, knowing that intervening early made all the difference.  This last time, a colic must have set in overnight and we didn’t find him until morning when it was already chronic.

His emphysema was also a constant worry.  Each hot, dry summer was harder for him.  This last year, in spite of the medicines, he had really struggled to breathe and had lost a lot of weight.  It was heartbreaking trying to encourage this once greedy-pig horse to nibble his feed, little by little, from the bucket you were holding and to see his spine so prominent and his neck so sunken.

(Poor boy, just recovered from a previous colic.)

But during the autumn, he had recovered and put on condition, his appetite returned, the light shone in his eye, his coat had regained a burnished sheen and he would canter along manfully behind the others.  By November I was worrying less.

Now we know his heart must have been fatally weakened and it betrayed him in the end.

The worry we have for the other two is different.  Their health niggles are not life-threatening.  That may change, but for the moment we are off higher alert and back to day-to-day levels of worry.

That feels like a weight has been lifted off us.  We now feel we could trust the two ”boys” to a horse sitter, which for the last three years we never dared and so we never felt we could be away from home.  (In some ways it was comparable to the time we spent looking after my mother, when she had Alzheimer’s, though this was a shorter period and we were ten years younger.)

Then there’s the work load.  We are getting older and every day is full.  After two bone-breaking accidents, I’ll never be as fit as I was before, and we were feeling dog-tired.  I know there will be those of you who look after more horses and do all sorts of other things in a day, who may think us wimps.  But tired is tired.  I know I was and I know I am less so now.

It’s complicated, this transition.  We miss our boy so much, but life will be different and not all change is for the worse.

Serin must be nuzzling up to someone influential in horse heaven, because one of my all-time wishes has at last been granted.  We finally found a nice, sound trailer that we could afford within a two-hour drive.  Again, simple, you may think, but the actuality is as rare as hens’ teeth.  We’ve chewed up the kilometers and seen some utter clunkers.  On the upside, we’ve also driven through some lovely, off-the-beaten-track countryside on glorious days, met some interesting people and seen their equally interesting houses.

If the price of diesel hadn’t been heading for stratospheric, we could have continued on in this fashion for a while, except that I was getting dispirited.  Pom and I have a few good years ahead of us, but no point waiting too long for wheels.  Transport means Pom and I can get to ride with my Australian friend and her Spanish horse.  Wheels will spirit us to the group trail rides and dressage lessons I have been dreaming about.

Where there are wheels, there will be a way…… (sorry!)  A way to get back my Cavalière Attitude.  (And I have always intended this to mean ”horsewoman’s” – not “offhand” as in cavalier attitude, the usual phrase.)

(New trailer, previously owned and well cared for by the mounted police!)

So, I apologise for a long absence this autumn, but I didn’t want my cavalière attitude to sound like a defeatist attitude.  And now, I can look towards the New Year, with all sorts of possibilities, and know my darling Serin has allowed me to open up a new chapter.

Our continuing adventures with Pom, the Pie and (my best Christmas present ever) the trailer will begin in the New Year.  I hope there will be lots to blog about.

Meanwhile I wish you a wonderful end to your year;  a Merry Christmas with good cheer and lovely presents if that is your choice.  Or peace, quiet and bringing on the new, if you prefer.

Thanks for reading and thanks especially for your support …..

(Image from cartepostaleancienne.blogspot.fr with thanks)

A Winter Bouquet of Herbs

I gathered an armful of aromatic herbs
The grey-greens of rosemary, sage and lavender;  winter jasmine with its starry yellow flowers and sprigs of purple hebe for its mourning hue,
I placed them where the fragrance would lift into the air when you brushed past
And if by chance I caught those perfumes, I might sense the greying twilight had been stirred by you

I gave those sprigs and twigs a little water, so they would last
And make roots and shoots and plantlets in their turn

From which I’d make
A perfumed garden; set apart but still nearby, where I would come to think of you, ’til even I had said my last goodbye

And years ahead, when someone finds a grey-green clearing in among the wild woodland
Wondering what spell was woven here, what cavalière rode by,
They need never know, could never guess
Our secret;  buried here is all we lived so sweet together, Serin …. you and I, you and I

Serin II (known here as Aly)

8th April 1984 – 14th November 2012

“Good night, sweet prince;  and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest” (Hamlet)

Jean-François Pignon visits Cahors

Just by chance, I picked up a flyer for a local cinema to see that an “avant première” of Jean-François Pignon’s autobiographical film, “Gazelle” was being shown on Friday evening preceded by a personal appearance of the man himself and his horses in our home town!

He’s a big star in the French horse world and internationally known too, so the event seemed underpublicised and the crowd that gathered was surprisingly small.  Monsieur Pignon and his small troupe of lovely mares (and foals) gave a beautiful, low-key demonstration of man and horse in harmony.   So glad to have witnessed that so close!  Shame about the circus-style outfit, for such a “natural” performer a clean t-shirt and jeans would have seemed more apt, but here are some pictures for your enjoyment ……

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I wasn’t able to stay on for the film, but looking at the trailer on his website, www.jfpignon.com I look forward to seeing it soon.

I’ve been enjoying all the equestrian events at the Olympics.  What a fabulous showcase of horses, horsemanship and talent.  Meanwhile, back at the ranch, summer is a trying time for my boys.  The “old boys”, Pie, and Aly especially, are very wheezy and on regular medication – I breathe a sigh of relief for them when there are fresh breezes and a drop of rain, a thundery dose of which we had today – and Pom has to be constantly covered as his sweet itch has gone into overdrive.  I can just about manage it with a range of lotions and potions, covers and stratagems to avoid insects (hard when you are surrounded by woodland), but even so he has lost a chunk of mane and I’d love to find something which would act as a preventative – if anyone has any tips on supplements that work for their horses then I’d be glad to hear.

Hope you’re enjoying summer!

Australians, a Dolphin and Temporary Wheels

Nope, I haven’t migrated to warmer climes (though given the barely noticeable appearance of Summer in northern Europe, I could have been tempted) but I’ve had Australian visitors, who brought a large armful of virtual sunshine with them on their recent visit.

Jake, Nuala, Rhîan  (our niece) and Tom only stopped off for three days during a turbo-charged tour of Europe’s high points, but we were so glad they did.  Even if we couldn’t compete with the culture of Paris or the fleshpots of Barcelona (and had serious jealousy pangs looking at their itinerary:  Amsterdam/Berlin/Milan/Venice/Rome…)  we could, at least, be the mid-tour safe haven, with hot showers, comfy beds, endlessly rotating laundry facilities and fresh food.  (Realistically, these days, we couldn’t envisage sleeping in hostels or on trains and living on McDo’s as they were, but it sounded so enviably bohemian!)

Sadly, during their visit, the weather was too overcast for flopping round the pool, but it was a clement sightseeing temperature, so we dragged them round crumbly old castles and medieval towns, certain that this was as far from Perth (Western Australia) as one could get - literally - and all with a generous dose of green as antidote all those racy, reverberating capitals and tourist honeypots.

Even so, Cahors looked pretty good as a tourist attraction….   Outside the Hôtel de Ville trees, benches, lampposts and waste bins wore knitted vests …??!!  Apparently anyone with spare wool had donated it to local retirement homes where enthusiastic knitters had made multicoloured woollies to garb the town centre.  Idiosyncratic, but certain to raise a smile!

Best of all, our Australians were beguiled by the horses.  Only Nuala is a rider, and a trainee vet., but they all hung around the boys as if they could teach them the meaning of life, stroking and generally adoring them.

As we all know, horses just take this as their due (here Pom is modelling his sweet-itch, mane-saving Batman style mask). But it did make life easier that the visitors  took it as read that the horses’ routine came first!

If you’ve followed earlier posts on this blog, you may recall that I’ve been an equine “lonely heart”,  advertising locally for riding companions.

Recently, a lovely Australian lady, also into Spanish horses, (she has an 8 year old gelding and a 2 year old filly) has been in touch and (touch wood) I hope we are on a similar wavelength when it comes to our styles of riding and views on horses.  We’re not too far apart geographically either, only a half hour’s drive, but I still need a trailer (more of which later).

My new Aussie friend (Kerri, are you reading?) brought her husband over to visit and, as we’re all hard-core house restorers, we brought out our old pictures to show them, over a glass of wine.  I won’t bore you with endless shots of half-built walls or semi-installed bathrooms, but amongst the massive hoard of lab. printed photos, (remember those?!) I was glad to rediscover some very old pics. of my first pony, Dolphin, which I had thought were lost.

For those of you who fondly remember life in black-and-white or Instamatics, here are a couple of favourites (Dolphin was ”Godolphin Juniper” a 14.1hh Welsh section E pony; my partner during my teenage years.)

 

 

 

 

(Note the sophisticated jump supports!!)

Ah Dolphin, I’m sorry you had to put up with me as a teenager.

¨¨¨¨¨¨

And so to the vexed and long term quest for a trailer.  I’ve seen wrecks and crocks and crooks selling crocks, but honest, modestly-priced-yet-sound horse trailers are like the Holy Grail.  A couple of years ago we went to see a house for sale (Hi Jill!) whose lovely owner has since become a good friend and who had a great trailer for sale at a decent price - although it was on UK plates and not registered in France.  At the time, we believed we couldn’t pull a trailer without a special “E” licence (costing around 1,000 euros) so we alerted horsy neighbours to the opportunity and Eric offered to do the rather intricate paperwork of registration, having, in the course of business, registered cars for clients in the past.

Two years down the line and rules have been relaxed so we can now tow a trailer on our UK driving licences in France, and lo and behold, neighbour wants to sell the trailer we helped them buy.  However, here is the twist:  they are advertising it at double the price …………  I leave it to your imagination how vexed we feel.

BUT, my good friend Patrick, who now rides so rarely since he bagged a juicy promotion, has let me borrow his trailer whilst he is on holiday in August.  So, in his aptly named “Cheval Liberté” trailer, Pom and I hope to hit the open road very soon.

Don’t want to tempt fate, but maybe our luck is on the turn?……………..

Cornucopia!

Since my last post at the end of April, I’ve been slowly getting my strength back after the plate was taken out of my leg.  What I didn’t expect was that it would be like having a crutch kicked away, so it’s taken time to get back to normal and I’m still not riding yet.

However I haven’t been able to resist going mushrooming, as we’ve had torrents of rain and warm spells in between.  One day I had a quick look in the woods, without taking a knife or basket and the girolles were practically leaping out of the undergrowth into my T-shirt-serving-as-an-apron!

The growth in the garden has been so lush, we’ve had difficulty keeping up, particularly with the box hedging and topiary, and the blowsy roses have bowed over full of raindrops and dropped their petals far too soon.  It’s been a month of rainbows and deep indigo skies then all too brief periods of warm sunshine when you could almost hear the grass growing.

But the project which has kept us busy is restarting the half-finished renovation of a small barn which we had planned to turn into a “gîte” – holiday accommodation – eventually.  Plans were kick-started by a threatened visit by my husband’s niece and her three friends coming over from Australia to “do” Europe and drop in on us en route, which has spurred us on to get it as ready as we can by the time they arrive.

So most things (including the blog!) are on hold at the moment as we get our hands thoroughly dirty yet again and enjoy getting our teeth into an all-consuming project.  Hopefully there will be photos to show for our efforts soon.

The horses are content making inroads into the spring grazing, a few metres only per day.  Aly has been having problems recently with his near hind leg.  No sign of swelling or heat in the leg, hoof or sole and our best guess was a problem in the stifle area, which the vet also suggested.  So he’s been having syringes full of bute and applesauce and is much improved…

Pom is straining to get going again!!

And the Pie … just keeps on shedding!

As I’ve been feeling so very tired, I found myself thinking of Madeleine Kahn’s song, from “Blazing Saddles”;  although, in her case it’s the men in her life that are wearing her down (definitely not my problem!).  However, I still found it amusing enough to include here……

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uai7M4RpoLU&feature=fvwrel

Once life gets back to normal and I’m riding again, there will be more horse news!