Wychwell Eventing Blog

D is for ...

May 2, 2013

....Dougal!


Yes this France and France likes making rules and regulations, it likes making so many that most french people don't seem to be that bothered about breaking them. Especially road rules like speed limits and solid white lines or private property and no hunting/shooting/fishing signs. I'm with them on this, I hate rules and restrictions so I find it particularly galling that one of the rules that can't be bent if I wish to have Dougal registered with the Haras Nationaux  as Origine Constatee (of known origin) is that his name must begin with the letter D since he was born this year. last year it was a C and so on, that's why poor old kevin got labelled 'Chocolate Teapot'.
My gripe ends there because I do think the idea of being able to register a horse OC ( origine constatee) is a fantastically good idea. It allows people like me to breed foals from my own stock without the need for the stallion to be graded. There are penalties, the registration is not cheap, blood tests need to be taken of mum, dad and baby and despite being allowed to compete in the young horse classes they won't be eligible to win money.
With everyone getting more and more hung up on breeding ( which personally I don't agree with for an eventer as there seems a lot to go into the pot besides pedigree and ability) it means I can chug away making the odd baby here and there that isn't just restricted to competing in the amateur classes. I have yet to see if BE are going to allow them to enter young horse classes, their DOB is recorded and blood tested etc, but it won't be a graded a stallion- we shall hopefully see in due course.

.....Dad.



Yep this is Dougal meeting his dad for the first time.

........... DONT' TOUCH MY KID


Dougal has to have a little chat with his dad every morning on the way to the field now and Charlie, bless him, is always delighted to have a little chat and  be very gentle besides , which I think is kind of cute. Does Charlie know he's the dad? That's the thing.
I make an admission here that the making of Dougal is quite the most amateur, red neck undertaking of my life. I'd had Charlie here since he was three but the opportunity for him to make babies never really arose since Peral had a foal and I had no idea how to go about it.
With previous foals the dads were small and young so they ran with the mare and it seemed to work okay, but Charlie was a bit big for Pearl and by last Spring pretty old,6, and pretty macho. ( He was beginning to behave like a bloke and it seemed right that he should be gelded but having had him for such a long time it seemed an awful shame to miss out on his Contender bloodline. Pearl might be small but she's old, experienced and she serves a mean double barrel so I kept my fingers crossed she'd be able to look after herself.
Don't think I didn't have fears about how it was going to work or how I was going to separate them. I did, for sure I did and quite rightly so.
Charlie went in with his woman about three in the afternoon a nd there followed an excruciating few hours of him  chasing her round the field, licking her boobies and dripping with excitement from you know where. A ghastly spectator sport and Pearl was doing  her best to cut the fore play short and make him get along with it. Charlie wasn't really sure how or where to get on though, so it was rather long winded.Eventually he got the gist of it but it wasn't the most romantic coupling as Pearl was rather squashed by him and made it rather clear she wasn't going to tolerate being sat on by a big fat slob for more than a few moments. Having witnessed the deed and seeing that Pearl wasn't particularly enjoying the experience I decided to rermove Pearl from the equation and get chubby Charlie back in.
NO BLOODY WAY was Charlie's amswer to that.
So I then chased Charlie round the field until about half past ten at night while he herded Pearl away, away and away some more. Poor little Pearl, she was quite exhausted and I was quite concerned for her welfare when suddenly Charlie must have been overcome by the grumbles coming from his  fat belly and came to me for the bucket of feed. We grabbed him, grabbed he,r brought them in together, slammed the door on Charlie and whisked Pearl away to a secret hidden location.
Poor heartbroken Charlie, he shook, sweated and worried all night but by the morning he was back on  topic - FOOD!

There were two worries I was left with after this romantic encounter, the small one was that it seemd pretty unlikely Pearl would be pregnant ( but there was no way I was going through that procedure again) and the second was that it would have alerted Charlie to what being a stallion was all about. I'd be lying if I told you it didn't affect him, it definitely tuned him into what a mare was meant for but the longterm good news it that it hasn't affected him in the least. He was gelded last summer and I would challenge anyone to know that he was kept entire until the age of six or that he had produced an heir. He is just the most gentle, laid back kind of fellow, he can travel in the trailer beside a mare who's fully in season.
She can be bellowing,squirting and cocking her tail and he'll look at her with appealing eyes and say," Please love can you stop being so disgusting, you absolutely stink and it's quite putting me off the promise of supper."

So all's well that ends well, we made a little Dougal and sometimes  it seems you can just get away with being clueless if you shut your eyes, cross your fingers and pray!
 

Poisson D'Avril

April 9, 2013


Muddy played the joker this April first, she set out with the dogsbody and his brother to look at a job, boiler installation or something thrilling. So Mud's entertained herself in the van by barking at the trees, jumping on the dash and nashing her teeth at the window, unfortunately during her frenzied car guarding activity she managed to jump on the central locking. And no, the keys hadn't been removed so a frantic rescue operation ensued. Not of mud's, of the keys. The dogsbody obviously h...
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Get your rocks off in the forests of Fontainebleau.

March 28, 2013


It seems to me that the vast sprawling forests that surround Fontainebleau just to the south of Paris are destination to  a wide variety of adrenalin junkies all seeking their particular thrill fix, as you too will soon discover.

First up we had to get there, you may remember that I had foreseen such a long trailer trip being a particular problem for Turnip travelling alone. It seems like I know my root veg. Turnip said,"Two hours fine, a minute longer, no way, hold on guys, I'm busting out of...
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No more snow.

March 16, 2013

Please, no more snow
So although this is what it looked like last week from tuesday til friday we did finally get a snow plough round which coupled with a day of rain allowed us to get out. Everywhere was back to a delightful wet bog by then and the spring looked ever so far away.
Thankfully that meant an end to lugging round hay on foot and amusing ourselves watching the little birds feeding

which has been quite amusing since the big fat finches have learnt to ride the carousel,

giving the litt...
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Not out of the woods yet....

March 14, 2013

My blogs are getting back to be intermittent affairs and far from meaning there is little to report it's the opposite, we've been busy bees and to be frank by the time I get  in each night I'm far too bolloxed to have brain cells ready to produce text of any description, let alone worth reading.
I notice my last blog is written from the snow, so too is this, obviously snow means less horse stuff and  more time.

Anyway this blog is dedicated to Turnip as his progress hasn't really featured for a...


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Ted takes a tumble from the snow queen!

January 24, 2013

 
Yeah, yeah we had the snow too!  Unlike some of you we actually had polar bears 'dans le coin' .
 To think some of you poor buggars still have snow now! Our snow only stopped us riding for four days (touch wood, there could well be more on the way) but while it was here I thought I should do something useful, so it seemed a cunning plan to break Peggy in, even if she is only two. There are some ponies in Peggy's background, we won't mention names, who weren't that cute to break so it seemed a...
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Plodding on

January 12, 2013
I don't know how it's been for you, but here it's been a pretty drab start. Grey, grisly wet and depressing.
Despite this or perhaps because of ? We've knuckled down to get some basics learnt, we've trucked Normany, ridden miles and hopefully got some foundations in place, or  we're on the road to being understood at the very least.
Visa has started jumping at Gavray



as has Cloud



Popeye has forded streams



as has Monty



And yes, that's the Mouse back in the saddle remembering how to ride ponies that ...
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Happy New Year!

January 1, 2013


Monty's been nagging, nagging and nagging at me, he wants to go and see the christmas lights at Montjoie up the road.
So I threw in a little new year's eve surprise for him and took him up in the trailer to see in the new year!



One minute we were there, then the next we're here;



Welcome 2013!

We had to take Popeye too;



'Cos he'd heard from Visa and Cloud on their coach tour last week that the lights were seriously cool;



So as you can see, all three of us and the camera man had a truly wicked time;



e...
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Of fairs and fears

December 30, 2012


Before the year is done( and the clock's ticking now) I wanted to catch up with a few of our fearsome and fairsome adventures from this particularly pretty Autumn.
Boy, that seems a long time ago now after weeks of greyness, mist, cloud and rain. How can you have Christmas in a soggy mizzle? It's depressing enough anyhow, at least with a sunny day of crispy snow it feels right!

So anyhow this Autumn we got up to a few tricks outside of the usual pony stuff like breaking Visa;



with spotty dogs, t...
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Merry Christmas

December 24, 2012




Hope you all have a very jolly time



with family and friends.



I hope Santa's reindeer remember where you live

 

and Santa



remembers what you wanted



and not what you didn't;




Hope you get to share lots of yummy food but don't make a pig of yourself,



I mean; a pig of yourself



Hope you have a few drinks, but not too many



Most of all we hope you get to have a lot of fun



with all your loved ones.






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