Friday 28th November

Today was my first full day as a working student for Eddy Modde!

The work day starts at 9am, which is a really long lie for me! We start with feeding the horses and giving them all more hay. We then have to move some of the horses into different pens to give them some time to play. We then muck out the stables and give more hay and water to all the horses. We then have some other chores around the yard like cleaning the canteen, sweeping outside, cleaning the coffee machine and others I haven‘t learnt what they are yet. Before lunch we have to bring some of the horses back into their stables and move some others out and then it’s lunch time.

After lunch is our own time to play with our horses.

I started with playing with Blossom, I didn’t do anything very exciting as I am still allowing her time to adjust to her new home before asking her to do anything new.

We started with lots of friendly and stick to me, with lots of trot to try and warm us both up and get her more connected to me. Then played with yo yo game and sideways, both went very well so we moved onto playing with circles and really working on keeping her focus on me. It was getting better and we even managed to get a few changes of direction and transitions in there too!

I then let Blossom stand on the pedestal, she just loves standing up there and makes it very difficult for me to convince her to come back down again.



We then played with the ball which is a new toy for Blossom, so I wasn’t very sure what she would think of this. It was in the corner of the indoor school so I just rolled it out towards Blossom and she just had a little sniff at it then a little paw, and then she looked at me and I felt she was saying well now what do you want me to do? stand on this?? Well she gave this idea a good try anyway, but couldn’t quite manage to balance herself on there!!



I then saddled and girthed in three stages and mounted and checked my lateral flexion all was good so we headed off to follow the rail in walk, adding in 9 step back up every so often. We then tried some trot, but she was really impulsive today so we only tried for a couple of strides and then back to walk.


As Smarty hasn’t done any Parelli before I am just taking things really slowly with him to build up his trust in me, especially around his legs. As he has had a extreme case of mud fever he still expects his legs to be extremely sore and doesn’t like me to touch them so I spent a lot of time today playing friendly with his legs with my hands and also the CS. Near the end of the session I was able to touch his legs without him moving or lifting his legs so I am really happy about that. We also started playing with the next 3 games, he is a very clever little pony and seems to pick up what I am asking of him very quickly so think he is going to be really fun and a challenge to play with, so I looking forward to the next few weeks with him.

Before we finish for the night we have to skip the stables of any poo and give the horses more hay and check all the water and then feed before we finish and go for dinner.

Well really enjoyed my first day, just need to get used to the routine so I am not always asking what I am to do next, but I am sure that will come soon enough.