Saturday 13th December

Today I went into Oostburg with Nadine shopping, so it was nice to see where I am living in daylight for a change!! My camera has died or is dying so we were going to take it and try and get it fixed - but the guy in the shop had a look and gave it a clean but said I had to send it back to the manufacturer to be fixed so that wasn’t good!! We then looked round a few other little shops and then headed back to the stables.

Because of my little shopping trip it meant I had less time to play with the ponies than normal, so I was just going to do a little bit with each of them. Just as I was about to take Blossom out to play Eddy came and offered to play with Smarty again, so of course I said yes to this!

Today Eddy used the 45ft line on Smarty he said because it can be nosier than the 22ft rope it is sometimes better for this type of friendly game as it will help him to become more confident and also because the 45ft line is thinner when playing the porcupine game with it will be less comfortable for Smarty to lean into the pressure and may help him to learn to yield more easily.
Eddy started with playing friendly all over with the rope and then moved on to playing with the rope around his bum and then gradually moving the rope further down nearer his hocks and then so it was touching his back legs. Today Smarty was much better he didn’t really explode today, he did have the occasional trot to try and get away but that was about it. He did however still stop a lot when he felt the pressure on him was too much to cope with. Eddy had let two of his horses loose in the arena while he was playing with Smarty and one of them was obviously trying to get Smarty to play while Eddy was playing with him. So I think this helped as Eddy was going through his phases to get Smarty to walk the other horse was also biting his bum and his legs so I think this helped encourage him to walk and it may have also helped his confidence to see that the other horse was not scared by the ropes and was very happy and confident trying to play with everything. It was really funny to watch!!
Once Smarty became a little more confident with the rope around his bum, Eddy moved on to just having the rope around one back leg at a time, Smarty really didn’t like this and stopped a lot and put a lot of effort into not moving again. Eddy ended up just moving his FQ round and around as this seemed to be the only way Smarty would move and even then it required quite a high phase to get such little movement. But this did improve and Smarty was able to do a few steps in walk with the rope on his leg, which is an improvement!! Eddy finished with just playing friendly game with his hands on Smarty’s legs and had to use a lot of approach and retreat to get Smarty confident enough to let him touch his back legs.. Smarty has worked out that if he just keeps moving in small circles or backwards it is really difficult for anybody to get close enough to touch his back legs, so this was interesting to watch how Eddy used approach and retreat to gain Smarty’s trust to allow him to get close enough to touch his legs. So again today it was a great learning experience for me to watch this and I think I really have picked up a lot of helpful tips that will help me with Smarty.

Well I think Eddy must have played with Smarty for over an over again, as I only had about 45minutes left to play with Blossom. But having Eddy play with Smarty was well worth it!
So I didn’t really do anything that exciting with Blossom - basically just played with things we have been working on the last few days. Most things went well, she wasn’t has soft as she has been the last couple of days but that might have been more my fault as I was rushing more as I knew I was against the clock! Today we also spent a little time playing with the pedestal, she now knows when she stands on it she has to have her back legs closer to it and not stretch as far away as she possibly can have them. So this in itself is a big improvement for her and today she also managed to walk over letting one back foot touch it and I would say today was the most relaxed she has managed to do this as there was no rushing to get over as quick as she could or resistance when I asked her to walk over. So I will continue to play with this and maybe she will gain enough confidence to let both back feet touch on the way over….