Heels Down, Kick On

Yesterday, Flora had her first ever physio appointment. This was to make sure that the tension she carries during schooling is more... well, attitude, and not pain. At 12:30pm, we welcomed Lee Clark-Physio to the yard and introduced him to Flora, her background and her problems. Flora is a grumpy old goat. She’s not interested in you unless you know her well already, or you are brandishing a carrot. But she seemed at ease with Lee immediately, and stood quietly while he began to check her over. It became apparent very quickly that she had soreness and tension in the base of her neck, across her back and her sacroiliac region. Lee was a very good teacher, advising us to ignore her behaviour when being touched, and to watch the reaction of the muscles themselves instead. Sure enough, there was visible, involuntary spasming. And why wouldn’t there be? Make anyone do any kind of workout, particularly holding themselves in a certain position for a length of time, and there wil...

It’s been 11 days since Project Relax (or Project ‘Chill The F*ck Out as I really like to call it) began. Only 6 of those have been ‘school days’. The rest have been hacking days or (sadly) rest days, due to a little inconvenience known as ‘work’. However, I am pleased to report (in fact, I’m over the bloody moon to report) that I am genuinely seeing some progress with Flora’s work in the school.   My last post described the first session we spent schooling alone, after a lot of tension and head throwing the day before, running through a dressage test with a friend. It was a pretty successful session, with a vast improvement seen on the video recorded by Alice. The next night, we had a lesson. Our instructor let me spend a long time working Flora in in walk, just like the night before, but with more leg yielding and some turn on the forehand at the corners of some squares to encourage her to step under from the beginning. Once she was warmer and looser, we moved...

Yesterday was DAY 1 of PROJECT RELAX. Flora is naturally quite tense in the school, so since we are biting the bullet and trying to start improving our dressage, this needs sorting. After a warm up and a run through of our Prelim test at the weekend, which my friend Eli videoed, Flora’s resistance to contact reared its ugly head again, which ironically, is a perfect description of Image 1, below 🤔 . Even when she’s not obviously resisting, her jaw is clenched and she’s gener ally quite upright (Image 2). Interestingly, when we are warming up, she is happy to flop round long and low, but as soon as I shorten my reins, I tend to disappear down a hole in her back. 🤦‍♀️ She’s been checked over, had her teeth done, her bit professionally fitted and her tack changed, so it seems it’s down to a combination of my riding (makes sense) and the fact that she was trained to race, is now 14 and hasn’t done much in the way of schooling in the meantime - at least, not consistently. Sooo...

Recently, we spent a couple of hours on a very cold Saturday afternoon with Mike of Fairbrother Photography, and had a lot of fun taking pictures! Well, I did. Flora could barely mask her disdain at being poked and prodded with brushes and coat shine for over an hour, especially after being brought in from the field an entire 119 minutes earlier than usual (how dare I?). A number of other things really got her goat during the shoot too. But other than that, she really enjoyed herself. The day began with me heading to the farm much earlier than usual, so that Flora could actually spend the same amount of time in the field as always (she forgot that part). It was a real risk pre-photo shoot, since the field was like the banks of a Tanzanian river after heavy rain and a visit from a herd of parched elephants. She was first out that morning and went cantering off to the brow of the hill, shouting for her boyfriend, then sheepishly mooched back to graze nearer the gate when she r...

What an amazing time my oldest bestie and I had yesterday at #yourhorselive2017 and Carl Hester’s 50th birthday gala #carlhester #oneononeatfifty. Yes, the queues were horrendous and yes, we had a bit of an incident with a chocolate crepe, but we shopped ‘til we dropped and, most spectacularly, managed to meet, chat and get pictures with every member of equestrian royalty that was there. First was Charlotte Dujardin. We didn’t get into the queue early enough for Charlotte’s signings, but we did manage to stand very close by and marvel at how immaculate she looked. When I’m around horses, I’m rarely made up, unless I’ve been at work first - and even then, the stresses of the day have caused my make-up to mysteriously drop off, stress spots on my chin to develop and my hair to go as flat as a motorway-crossing hedgehog. She was every inch the star, but most importantly, was as down to earth as the rest of us. After her afternoon training demo with the utterly STUNNING grey mare, Flor...

On January 9 th 2016, I wrapped up warm and headed for a yard on a working farm about a 5-10 minute drive away from me. Arriving on time (for once in my life), I got out of the car at 9am, breath visible on the freezing air, and walked towards the barn that housed my potential new loan horse: Flora. I can’t even tell you how excited I was. After 11 years of barely even riding anymore, this would be the closest I’d ever come to my ‘own pony’, at the grand old age of almost 32. All the whining and begging and pleading in my younger years did me no good whatsoever – horses were expensive, enormously tying and that was that. To this day, I’m still regretful but grateful that I never had my own when I was younger. I can guarantee that I wouldn’t have done as well academically, nor had as much freedom socially. I definitely wouldn’t have lived on the other side of the world for three years and experienced any other cultures. There’ll be many people out there that could’ve juggled all t...

#14   A Whole Lotta History A few months back, I wrote a post about how the initial suggestion I try Flora came about.   If you read that post, you’ll know that I was promised a very lovely, very quiet, ‘Nana’ of a horse, who would be lots of fun and give me no issues at all. I have to say, ‘Nana’ horses are not my style. Nor are complete tornadoes of death, but given the fact I’d had 11 years off, I thought a ‘Nana’ Thoroughbred would give me the ideal compromise. At the time, Flora was 13 years old. Not a youngster; but not an actual ‘Nana’ either. She’s actually the same age as Valegro. A few weeks after meeting her and her owner for the first time, being the complete geekazoid that I am, I wanted the full details of her background and history. Using her Weatherbys passport, which names her only as ‘Bay Filly’ (*sniff*), I set to work Googling the f*ck out of her. I don’t know what I was imagining finding. Pictures of her as a foal maybe. Blowing out the c...