Legacy and Cloudy had the back man out last week. This is something that was well over due for them both. I typically like to get them checked every 8-12 weeks. This is because they are both idiots in the field. Thankfully it's just Cloudy who's an idiot after I've put him out in the morning, Legacy just walks straight over to the haylage and will have the odd roll now.

The man who I have out to have a look at them has been doing them since I first got to the yard I'm on now, this is the 4th year using him and I've never had any problems after having him out and he's only ever been great with the 2 horses. He checks them all over, all down the spine, checking the poll, hips, legs, feet.

Legacy was first up and she had a sore tail bone and a dropped left hip. This is the first time that she's ever had a sore tail bone but it's a regular thing for her to have a dropped left hip. This must be something she does while being an idiot in the field. This typically never effects her when being ridden or she never really shows any pain from this. She can be lazy with her hind legs so maybe this could be contributing to this. The main time you do know when she's got something wrong with her hip is when you try to pick her back feet up. She will very much let you know that it's painful and I know it's bad but due to this I tend to leave the picking out her feet hind feet when I can, thankfully she doesn't have hind shoes on. Due to her hip she had to have a few days off work for the pain to go.

Cloudy was pretty good with his check over as he only had his poll out. Typically he will have his left hip dropped like Legacy and his arthritis with be showing in his foot, but this time he wasn't too bad. Super flex must be going a great job for him during the winter. Due to him only having his poll out he was fine to be ridden after but my mum wanted to give him a day off for him to get back to normal again. He was defiantly feeling better when he went out after as he was running rings around the field stopping for the odd buck, rear or roll. He even went over to Legacy who just went over to the haylage to try and get her involved but she didn't both and then he carried on.

Although there wasn't much wrong with either of them and there were no major issues in terms of pain riding before hand I'm going to make sure I don't let them both go 6 months without being checked again. The 2 times I've been thrown off of Cloudy have been due to back pain which could've been avoided if they were checked more often and that's even when they were done every 8-12 weeks. 

Do you get your horses backs checks? How often do you do it?

Legacy's First Group Session

The other week Legacy had her first ever pole work lesson. Since I first got her she has come along way with working in the school with others. The first time we went into the school with another horse she thought the main aim was to race this horse. At this point I wasn't even working her, she was just standing in the corner trying to get her used to others in the school as I didn't know what she'd be like. Thankfully the other horse wasn't far off finishing in the school when we went in so I could just manage to keep Legacy calm enough for the others to finish and leave. 
When my mum got Cloudy she had no choice but to get used to working with others in the arena. When she would first go in with Cloudy she would get a little excited but it's something she got used to and is know completely fine with. Although I do feel she uses him as a distraction when she doesn't want to work and does her planting. 

As I've been having my weekly lessons on Legacy and we've been doing poles recently when the instructor had an idea of doing some group pole work lessons I thought this would be great for Legacy. 

There's a few reasons why I thought it would benefit her:
- She will learn to stop and start work without stopping meaning finishing.
- She will learn to have to work while others are around without getting distracted

This was the pole set up for the lesson, the poles on the left were set up as walk poles in the beginning then changed to a trotting distance further in the lesson. The pole in the middle was a small half pole which was used for one person at a time to do figures of 8 over to help supple up the horse. The poles on the right in the fan where first set up at a walk distance when changed to a trotting distance. The session first started out walking over the 2 sets of the poles to warm the horses up. After this one horse would go onto the middle pole. After doing this for a while a set of the poles were changed from walk to trot distance and we where then working in trot and walk. The fan of poles was then changed to trot as well so we were constantly working in trot. After that the exercise changed where a jump wing was put half way through the poles so when approaching the fan we had to choose if we were going over the wider part of the poles or narrower part. After that all the horses stood in the middle of the arena while they had their own turn going over the poles on their own, the other 2 horses did some canter work around the poles, Legacy just kept to trot. 

Over all Legacy wasn't too bad working with the other horses in the arena. She was a little pent up at the beginning playing up when I was walking her over the poles. I feel this was due to her not being worked for over a week rather than being in the arena with others. There was a couple of times where I did feel like I wanted to get off and give up on the group lesson with her, but after a little perseverance she calmed down and I stayed on and had the lesson. She worked well with the other horses and the only problems we had was that she was a bit stiff and was a bit awkward to get turning. There was a couple of times where she wanted to stop working and planted but after a little hit with the reins she was away working again. I'm really happy with the way she worked in this lesson and hopefully she'll keep it up when I school on my own or with my mum.

The Trams Lines Exercise

Yes those lines in the image are poles, it was the best I could work up after forgetting to take a picture of the actual poles. Although this is something I might try doing in the future with pole work posts, then add in a picture of the actual poles too. If it came up to a more complicated exercise to explain I will be able to add in arrows etc to show which way we went.

What we did with the poles:

Throughout a circle that took up half of the arena we set out 3 pairs of poles. One in the middle of the arena (orange),  one by the entrance gate (blue) and the other in between them too (green). 

The exercise was to then go through the poles and around In a circle or oval depending on which two sets of poles we were going through. In this lesson I hadn't done any work with Legacy since the lesson the week before so on the rare occasion she was a little lively (she can normally go awhile without work and be fine when you get back on.) this toyed with my confidence a little and I'm going to be honest there was a few times I was ready to throw the towel in and say I wanted to get off.

Thankfully I had put my big girl breeches on that day and I fought through it. 

Before using the 2 outer sets of poles we did a few exercises between the blue and green sets of poles. At this point I was fine confidence wise with Legacy. 

Some of the exercises we did were:

- Go through the blue set of poles and then through the green set.

- Go through the blue set of poles and either go on the a inside or the outside of the set of green poles.

- Same as above but opposite way around. Going through the green set and either way around the blue set. 

These exercises were done on both reins. 

After that we started to incorporate the orange set of poles. Were we would do big circles from blue through orange and smaller ones in between of orange and green then blue and green.

It took us pretty much the whole lesson to get a nice rhythmic trot out of Legacy this day as she was very much running in her trot. My Instructor was very determined to get a nice trot out of her before the end of the lesson and to end the lesson on a nice trot aswell.

When we started to incorporate the orange poles was when Legacy started to heat up a little. I hadn't been this far down in the arena with her for a while as we'd been working in the top quarter to half in 20m circles and on a square/rectange that way I could always have a good amount of control of her.

The control when she starts to heat up is definitely a communication error rather than her needing another bit, something not fitting correctly, her not being happy etc. As when she does heat up my first Instinct is to stiffen and tense up and pull back on the reins slightly. Now I know that both of these are something I need to work on. In terms of the pulling on the reins this is also something we worked on in the lesson as the instructor told me to try intermittently slightly pull on each rein and that if she doesn't go off on me to send her into the arena fence a little by turning her head. I did manage to find some control of her by trying these out and maybe we'll get there when I stop stiffening up. 

We're Back On Track...

The last 2 days I've ridden Legacy and I've managed to do more than just sit on her or walk her around in circles on the spot. Yesterday was just your average schooling session in the arena with my mum on Cloudy. I started out the session by trying out some starting suggestions I got over on facebook through the equestrian bloggers group and she was just doing the usual of stopping and throwing her head when she doesn't want to work. 

After feeling inspired from the comments over there I seen a whip on the side of the school and decided to give it another try. I never typically use whips on her as she must've had somewhat of a bad experience with them in the past as whenever you give her a tap on the bum to back up the leg she will try to kick your leg as to say 'get off'. So knowing that I decided to just show her the whip, and it actually worked. I didn't have to hit her with in once, she knew it was there. Each time I felt she was going to slow down I would just show her the whip and she go back to working. There was a few head throws in the beginning but when she got into a rhythm she would work nicely. Even at the end of the session I asked her for a little canter on each rein, which we both have to work on very much as more as ground work before ridden but it was nice to have a little canter on her which we haven't been able to do for about the last 6 months.

In today's lesson she tried to start off a little slow but there was no stopping and no head throwing as usual. In the lesson today we worked on a big 20m circle then smaller ones at certain parts of the bigger circle. This was so we could help Legacy become more supple from her left side on the right rein and so she doesn't flick her back end out on the left rein. As she flicks her back end out on the right rein she's not sure what to do with her back legs as she's turning corners within the circle, she's kicking herself with her back legs which results in her stumbling and then having to correct herself. This now means that she has to wear boots on her back legs. This isn't too much of a major problem as I've gotten her used to having boots on her back legs, she can just try to swipe her legs at times to try and get them off, once the first velcro is done she's fine. This is just something I've got to watch with her. 

Didn't manage to get any pictures from the lesson so I've added these in to break it all up.

I'm Back! Where I've been.. Quick Update.

Hey guys! Long time no write. 

It's been about 7/8 months since I last updated, but to be honest not much has happened in that time. I think that's why I haven't had the urge to get back blogging until now. I haven't been riding much over that time. I was busy with work throughout the summer then I was finding it was too hot for Legacy when I did have the time to ride on my days off. Then on the other scale of the weather when it wasn't too hot we had the horrible winds and rain where I live. I'm a fair weather rider at the best of times too, although I'm working on that after realising how much time out of proper work Legacy has had. 

I haven't had any confidence to ride Legacy out on the road as at the beginning of last summer she took off cantering on the road with me for no seeable reason, I stayed on but it still affected my confidence on the road with her, she was nappy on the road as it was so adding that on didn't help. Where she is kept for livery the roads get quite busy over the summer and the speed limit is 60. The tourists and most of the locals don't seem to care if there is horses on the roads, they'll come past speeding or beeping their horns if they can't get past. So because of this I can't hack out over the summer resulting in me totally losing my confidence on the road with her. 

This is something I'm working on though, I'm back to having lessons every 2 weeks with her. At the moment we're learning for her to respect me and listen to my legs while out on the roads as when she has her napping moments she's either not going anywhere or prancing a little in the middle of the road, the more I try to push her over out of the way of cars the more she plays up. So this is our main goal for now so I can regain my confidence on her out there. 

One of the other main reasons to why I didn't get to ride much throughout the summer was on one of the windy days we were putting a rug on her in the field, we only did this as she's very good standing there to put a rug on no matter what the weather. Unfortunately on this day the wind caught hold of the rug when we'd only managed to get it half on and it flew over her head. Due to this she spooked and took off around the field, falling over the rug as it came around her front legs. She was very lucky to come out of it without any major injuries, just a couple of grazes and burn marks from the velcro on the rug. What happened that night is something I never want to see again, it was horrifying. 

We're very lucky that she's not scared of putting rugs on in a breeze or rugs at all now. Quite the tough one Legacy is. 

The winter weather hasn't been the best on my 2 days off a week so I haven't had much luck riding there either, but as I mentioned I'm working on riding when the weathers not the best to try and combat the lack of riding for next winter.  

That's just a quick update to where I've been and what's been happening and as you can read, there's not much been on going on. I'm back at blogging now and I'm planning to update and post more frequently now.

I have also updated the pages Legacys feed and I have changed the link of my for sale page to my Preloved page now. 

Be Seen, Be Safe!

Reading a post a Lady put up on Facebook the other day about her horse being hit by a car while out hacking really made me start thinking and then I came up with this post. Wearing Hi-Viz when out hacking is something which is up to the rider. Up until mid February I only used to wear a vest out on the road and this was only when I felt like it, there were often times when I would think 'Oh I'm only going down the road, 20mins and I'll be back.'

But it hit me one day that I could just be leaving the yard and something could hit me, the fact that Legacy hates hacking out on her own and will nap and have a little dance in the road when she can get away with it made me feel like I needed it even more. Even with the dark evenings, the fact that she's dark bay doesn't help that she's less likely to be seen out on the road.

So I set off searching throughout the internet for Hi-Viz gear, I bought myself a hi-viz coat for the colder months, if I'm already wearing this I will be less likely to forget about putting on a vest, I got Legacy a netted exercise sheet, which will be great and airy for the summer months too and a bridle kit. This included nose band strip, brow band strip and strips for either side on the reins. There was also one point where I thought about getting her hi-viz boots, but she can be a bit funny with boots at the moment so it's something we're working on.

Now I will always wear hi-viz on the road, thankfully nothing has happened to myself or Legacy but it can be the difference between a driver not seeing you and a driver seeing you even by only a few seconds it can still make a difference. If you still end up being hit, it can be the difference between the impact you have from the car. It's just something to think about when you're hacking out without anything next time.

What are your views on hacking with and without hi-viz?

Happy 9th Birthday Legacy!

Hey Guys, yesterday (13th of April) I got to celebrate Legacy's 9th Birthday. This is the first of many I get to spend with her. 

Can't wait to be able to do more with her, and hopefully we will be further into and more accomplished the retraining of her by the time she reaches double figures.