I was back at the lovely WPF on Saturday, for an Easter themed Agility course. Of course, there had to be a "bunny hop"! Some new obstacles were invented - the Egg Box and the Egg Timer! And one horse clearly didn't read the instructions about NOT helping her handler to eat the chocolate eggs!!! More than that, she smelt them at 100 paces, even before her human had noticed they were there! Well, if her ridden career doesn't work out, a second career as "sniffer dog" surely beckons :-)
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So there was a 50/50 split of themed obstacles at yesterday's Horse Agility training session, the Mother's day obstacles included "Spa Day", Flowers and Hearts, whilst St. Patrick's Day was honoured with the Emerald Curtain, the Emerald Isle and the Leprechaun's Leap! Both, of course had to have Flags :-) What was interesting was that none of the horses seemed to mind the white flag (Mother's Day), but half of them really didn't like the black flag (St. Patrick's Day). It would seem that, as far as horses are concerned, not all flags are created equal! Always fascinating :-) As it was Burn's Night yesterday, the theme for Saturday's Horse Agility clinics was a Scottish one and it was great fun to have some ponies of Scottish decent taking part :-D Much fun was had with Scottish Flags, a Silly Hat, the Tartan Curtain and Nessie's Icy Loch, amongst other obstacles :-D And as horses are the esteemed subjects of several of Robert Burns' poems, how about a little extract from Tam o'Shanter: Weel-mounted on his grey mare, Meg, A better never lifted leg, Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire, Despising wind, and rain, and fire; Whiles holding fast his gude blue bonnet, Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet, Whiles glow'rin round wi' prudent cares, Lest bogles catch him unawares; Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, Where ghaists and houlets nightly cry. You probably have to be from the North of England to understand the title.... ;-) "Twirly" being the pronunciation of "too early", in this case "is it twirly (too early) for Christmas"??? I'm not a fan of the shops shoving Christmas at us from the beginning of November.... For me, it loses the magic. December 1st would be quite early enough! But this November I couldn't help myself. I figured the 29th November is only a couple of days early..... So the Intro to Horse Agility clinic will have a Christmas theme to it. Ah well, might as well go the whole hog then! So that's one Christmas Course designed, a whole 11 (yes, eleven! not 10.... Christmas Bonus!!!) xmas themed obstacles, including some old favourites and a few new ones as well. And whilst I do have a collection of xmas accessories already, a girl and her ponies simply can't have too much glitter ;-) Plus, I didn't have all the accessories for the new obstacles . So that was a good excuse to go shopping! Found some great, fun items to spice up the course. Getting quite excited :-D Bah, humbug! Well, I suppose that after such a superbly dry and mild September, the rain had to play catch up at sometime. Fat Pony's diet pen is suddenly awash with mud, although, thanks to a quantity of rubber stable matting, it now has a reasonably sized dry oasis in the middle which is keeping it usable to still restrict him part time. And gives us a nice spot to play "step into the hula hoop" which is an obstacle we need to improve for this month's course and breaks up Fat Pony's boredom. Meanwhile, the deluge outside has prompted me to book an Indoor arena for an Intro to Horse Agility clinic at the end of November. So, no matter what the wind and rain might throw at us, we should be able to have some fun :-) |
About meI started Horse Agility as a way of making groundwork more fun. It was something I could do with my semi-retired old boy and his small, cheeky, pony companion. What amazed me was how much it improved the ponies' general confidence in the process. I compete at Advanced 1 star level on line and at liberty. Archives
December 2016
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