Blue-arsed fly

What a crazy time of year this is! A horse event every weekend for about three months straight, lots of farm jobs including no less than 4 broody chicken to be looked after, and the downhill stretch to Christmas and holidays! I have no earthly idea how we will survive the rest of the year, but the old adage 'take it one day at a time' seems to help.

Annie is coming along in leaps and bounds (luckily not literally) and is settling into the Dragonwood lifestyle beautifully. She's a very laid-back girl with a friendly attitude and not as much assertiveness as her foster-sister, Rose. The extra hundred kilos Rose has on her might play some part in that!

I've only started riding Annie the past few days as she is now at a weight where I felt it was ok to give her a bit of work. She's on very good pasture at the moment and is down to daily, rather than twice-daily feeds. I've put her on Hygain Tru Gain which is really helping her gain weight but with no fizz. The sunflower seeds are putting a bit of shine in her summer coat which has started to come through very fast. I suppose as she gets healthier her old dead winter coat will be released and that seems to be happening already.

Her feet are holding up very well and she's already comfortable on most surfaces, including our gravel driveway. She's amazing.

My rides have focused mostly on re-training her stop button. As with many horses, Annie had been essentially taught that bit pressure can mean 'head down' as well as 'stop'. So, when I closed my fingers she just dropped her head and pushed through it. I had to be very conscious only to release pressure when she slowed her legs rather than changed the position of her head. She was very, very hollow anyway and very unhappy in the contact.

Once we established what the bit cue was for (ie only for slowing the legs), I started using some indirect turns to straighten her. Pushing the outside rein into the neck after pushing the outside knee into her side, I waited for two steps to see if she would move away, then opened my inside rein quite obviously when she didn't. She was soon moving away from the rein pressure, keeping her neck straight and softening her outline until she was quite round and forward and straight. Awesome!

After two rides, just doing that at the walk and trot, including lots of slow walk and slow trot to help give her time to think and move her legs, I was really pleased with her progress. This morning, we skipped most of the stargazing tension and moved straight into relaxed forward walk. Go Annie. :)

The Manu trick of halting her and giving her a loose rein has really paid dividends I think. She struggled with the concept of not moving her legs for the first two days, thinking that releasing bit pressure meant go forward. But this morning she moved very little and was completely still after the first two goes at it. She is quite active with stretching her neck, shaking her head, chewing and yawning and blowing. After she's finished, she must stand as I re-take rein contact and wait to be asked to move. She's getting a lot better with that too.

Canter.....was messy but improved. She's a big girl with a big stride, so it will take a lot of balance and strength that she simply does not have yet. The pig-rooting into canter was quite funny but she'll quit that in a while, I'm sure.

Half the farm is quite green and lush at the moment and the other half is good but the grasses are obviously of a different species. We're going to pilot a small area of native grass mix in the next few weeks and hopefully develop that grass across the rest of the property. Low in sugars and high in starch, it's perfect for barefoot horses and those prone to laminitis. Just what we need!

Young Timmy is off at Hillydale being started and is going great guns. You can read about him on their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Hillydale-Equine-Training-and-Sales/704025642964665?fref=ts Some lovely pics too.

Heidi, our broodmare, is about to be AI'd with Contenda semen and I'm very excited about the potential for this little baby. Should be a truly athletic horse and fingers crossed all goes to plan.

Jedi is getting some good piloting from young Maddy Reisner. They had a good showing at the NSW Eventing Champs last weekend. He really excelled in the showjumping rather than either of the other two phases, so we're going to take him out showjumping for a bit and see if someone might buy him as a showjumper. I really want to move him on to his next home as I've essentially stopped riding him now and I've already emotionally separated, if you know what I mean.

So, a lesson on Annie for me and on Jedi for Maddy at Ben Netterfield's this weekend, then it's a bit of judging, bit of showjumping, bit of dressage and then Berrima Horse Trials in just over a month. Good times!