wychwell-eventing-blog

D is for ...

Thu, 02 May 2013 13:19:04 +0100

....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

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 20:41:18 +0100

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 has a chequered past, he's pretty handy with old plastic packaging tape at getting through the door seal, round the lock and busting into vehicles. ONLY OUR OWN VEHICLES YOU UNDERSTAND. On this occasion the availability of first grade plastic tape was limited and the thin flexi stuff available just didn't cut it. Fortunately for them a couple of old farmer boys lopping down trees nearby saw their predicament and swaggered over with some wire to get in, boasting they'd be in with the minute.Half an hour later and they were still prodding and poking, puffing and panting while Muddy quizzed the strange human behaviour on display," why didn't they just open the door like normal?"
Apparently the little French farmer wielding the wire did know what he was about ( according to the expert) but was too short and stout to easily manoeuvre the wire to where he needed it to be despite standing on tiptoes. Unfortunate also that he was too much of a man to relinquish his wire to a taller member of the team, eventually his perserverance paid off though and he was able to claim the glory!

I am informed by those in the know at Wiki that the 'Poisson d'Avril' is the french equivalent of the April Fool and the tradition is to pin a paper fish to the fool's back without them noticing. Is this true? We've never witnessed it.

Pearl is also playing the joker at the moment and giving me the jitters, her foal with Charlie was due on the 27th March and she was by then fairly full of milk and ready to pop. Indeed the ' foal calculator' tells me she was due from the 14th to the 29th March, but still no foal. She's as big as a house though certainly not fat in herself, I haven't been generous with her food since Charlie was big dad I was trying to keep the foal as small as possible before it hit the dirt, but I have to confess that I am now worried despite my most mature efforts not to be. It's true Pearl does always like to hang on to her babies but this is beyond a joke. Her boobies are gynormous and will the foal be able to make its own way out? Has she hung on to it because the weather has been so damn cold? We were still getting heavy night frosts until two nights ago and it's hardly pleasant out now.

Puppy selling has been a nightmare despite my very best efforts with the cutesy photos.

What a bunch of wa, tricky people. The first two never showed, the third viewer arrived two hours late but did purchase ( that's okay then), the fourth ordered a brown girl over the internet, the fifth arranged a viewing for the remaining girl the next night, the woman who ordered over the internet changed her mind and wanted the other girl.(Too late love, she's just gone to the latest lady). Cutesy 'Currant bun' purchaser is in love with her and wants updates every day on her survival, which won't be long if they hang round here for any length of time as Red nearly obliterated a the whole half dozen playing in his table this morning when he came in for brekkie. The sixth viewer came and bought and left with pup",we love people like you!" So six viewings for seven pups and we've still got three!! What's going on?

Charlie

and Red

were both superstars on sunday despite a rather unorthodox preparation, especially for Charlie. We failed to get them out to Beny or Gavray as both owners were continuosly unobtainable,the big young horse show at St Lo for four days probably had them tied up, so we were left with what was available at home.
Charlie's prep comprised of me taking him up to the field in a vile mood, feeling absolutely pooped and with a pounding head( I have a cold). My mood was matched only by Charlie's own (maybe he has one too) and within the first 7 minutes he'd attempted to dump me twice, coming frighteningly close, so I jumped off bellowing "********, I'm never riding you again" and threw the whip at him.
Charlie understood that to mean he better get out of there, so he galloped home down the chemin.

Calming down that night I thought it would be silly not to take him if only for the collecting ring experience to see if being there made him better or worse.Let's face it he might be seven but he has the competition experience of a five year old. I often find the fear or distraction of a show to a young horse can make me become their better friend and so it was to be with Charlie. I rode him very gently, no spurs, no contact, no swearing, no pressure and took him back several stages to jumping from a trot for the first few fences. He went in and jumped clear, with confidence. What makes Charlie so very hard is that he can't handle pressure from a person, it has the reverse effect, you have to coax, cajole and congratulate him forward. More importantly Charlie made no attempt to deck me at any time, he behaved like an old hand once we'd got over the sight of several little ponies screaming round flat to the boards which caused lots of snorting, highstepping and tail waving.

Red was Red,still the only llama in the class,

lots of puffing and snorting, bucking and galloping, but he jumped clear with no style whatsoever in the 95cm and 1m05.He still relys soley on his massive power but is getting a lot more rideable. The canter now has gears, they're a bit crunchy and sometimes you can't quite get the one you want but there are now a range of speeds apart from turbo charged. I aim to get him jumping 1m10 clear regularly and then return to the UK to hopefully qualify him for one star.
So all those clears helped us win a few pennies back and let's face it in our current situation every little helps and it pays for them to go out again and get another day of experience under their belts.

Was rather alarmed to see in the photos that the size of my rear still makes Charlie's look petit

Perhaps it's time to lose the winter weight and slim down for the summer, but will it come? We've still been dogged by snow up until a week ago.

Get your rocks off in the forests of Fontainebleau.

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 22:15:02 +0100

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 here!"
Now you may think this sounds like an exaggeration, that's because you don't know Turnip, if Turnip says he's doing something he means it. As a young horse refusing to stand alone in the trailer I was quite sure he could be cured, we left him to his own devices to turn somersaults, backflips, get hooked over the bar and bellow his indignation on several occasions, but the fifth incident made me change my mind. It was a choice between keeping a trailer and a horse or quite possibly having the two mashed together to a mangled pulp of bloodied twisted metal.
We had taken him showjumping and returned to the trailer to find our neighbour white and trembling, telling us he'd had to let the horse out as he was coming out himself. I nodded calmly, with a wide smile, explaining serenely this sort of behaviour was quite usual with him. However proceeding round the corner I started to feel a bit of an idiot, not only had he managed to smash partitions and breast bars he'd also managed to punch the entire top half of the trailer out, apparently leg, head, neck and monster had been coming through. I think this was when I decided that I'd keep the trailer and the horse and let Turnip lay down the law once again.
Last summer I took him round to the great horseman's house, Mr. Tatlow's to use the jumps. Mr. T. snorted and poo pooed me with deriscion," all horses would learn to stand alone", but Turnip isn't all horses. Turnip has a thing or two to teach a man about a horse.

I waffle, the point is when Turnip says, he's getting out of the back he isn't just kidding. So highly illegally I'm quite sure, the dogsbody got into the back to whisper sweet nothings to the spoilt brat and hopefully comfort him for a further part of our voyage.It didn't seem to stop the problem but it did quell the crescendo for an hour.
Then it was my turn in the back, now I'm pretty brave a riding the lunatic but I wasn't dead keen on standing in there with him, after my hour I was baying at the window to be let out and had myself considered all sort of escape posssibilities. Despite the companionship the level of violence being thrown about in the back had me decided that the best course of action was to sedate Turnip and head back home, it was getting too dangerous for my liking.The dogsbody wasn't keen on that plan though, he argued it was further back than on and while Turnip couldn't be doped he was happy to stay with him the rest of the way.Probably deeming it preferable to sitting next to the me all the way home, giving him grief that the ginger tosser had screwed up my plan once again!
So we resumed the journey after a quick call to say we were experiencing technical problems and anticipated a late arrival.Little did we know!!
Alone as navigator and driver I was relying heavily on that untrustworthy device, the sat nav. As we got onto the outer Paris ring road it started jumping about , cutting in and out, telling me to turn back and all that jazz (apparently it has a glitch-dead handy!). I had a basic knowledge of our direction and felt sure we should head off to Verailles, so did the sat nav, down the road with a low bridge that doesn't take vehicles over 1.5m high.
I'd always wondered what happens when you pull off under those dangly warning things, now I know.Your nutty horse crashing around in the back goes beserk thinking it's being consumed by a monster while you panic, pull up on the hard shoulder and wait for the end of the world to come. But it doesn't ,a kindly farrier pulls up and delivers directions on where to go, only you're too stressed to get what he's saying becuase the dogsbody sensing we have reached a standstill is exiting the trailer on the edge of a motorway and the frenzied ginger nutcase is trying to come with him. So I sit there in a sobbiong heap, I can't see the map , let alone find which road I want or where I am................until the highway cops pull up. I get round two of directions, but I should have smelt a rat, this dipstick has just given me directions in to central Paris for the periphique. Since travelling in the trailer seems likely to be illegal we kangaroo off down the slip road with turnip working out in the back alone.
Phew, it's going well, we arrive at the periphique, very soon it's not going well.
It's rush hour we're stuck in traffic at least an hour from our destination on a free flowing road but being told our exit junction off the damn ring road is still over an hour off, even if it's only five hundred metres away. So metre by metre we crawl the sights of Paris while the ball of anger in the back gets more and more irate. Finally the trailer leaps in the air and I explode. The dogsbody choses the silent idiot over me and crazily exits the car and gets in the back whilst in the middle of the motorway in the middle lane. Okay, so we were at a strandstill, but there were still a lot of crazy french men whizzing around on motorbikes and those said bikes were nearly the demise of Turnip and the dogsbody. The final straw for him was being holed up in the motorway tunnels with a steady stream of full throttle bikes hammering past him. By this stage I don't really know who was more worked up, me, Turnip or the dogsbody. Well it wouldn't have been the dogsbody because I DO NOT KNOW ONE SINGLE OTHER PERSON in the whole world who would have been brave enough or stupid enough to stand in that trailer with that horse.
Apparently for some lengthy duration he was physically holding Turnip down by hanging off the headcollar while he tried to toss himself over backwards. The trucker behind had his mouth agape, he'd never seen such a carry on in all his miles off trucking,to be honest I doubt he will again. Anyhow the unusual calming strategy of the dogsbody's paid off and in due course, after six and a half hours on the road, we arrived. It didn't seem quite right unloading my passenger from the trailer at the entrance to the national school of gendarmes but noone seemed to bat an eyelid.

I'd left home with grand plans of riding Turnip round to settle him in, by the time we arrived I had grand plans of stealing a shot gun and blowing his brains out. But i didn't, we put him in his house, slammed the door, had to wait til ten pm to find out when my dressage was and then settled down to the first of four luxurious nights in the 4x4. It would have been okay except it was about 6 inches too short for me and we had three dogs and three pups doing stinking poos in a plastic box while mewling that they were cold. Tough tits, so were we, they should have been grateful we didn't relegate them to the trailer llike most normal people would have done.

By comparison our second day of dressage seemd rather dull. I rode Turnip for two hours in the morning , not much in the schools just round and about to try and settle him. I have to say he was remarkably chilled in his plastic stable especially since his was very unlucky in having an empty stable either side of him and a stone wall infront, nothing to occupy his peanut brain. His sole distarction was squabbling with the grumpy horse over his back wall, lucky I suppose his acquaintance had a bit of charcater with which to entertain him.

He did some lovely work in the collecting ring

and then decided to explode when I took him in the ten minute warm arena. I don't know if this infact made him better or worse for the actual test, whether he mistakenly thought we had begun the test or whether it just heated him up before he went in I'm not sure. Either way I wasn't going to complain about his test or mark, it was horrid and uptight with several mistakes and canter anticipations, but believe me if you'd seen some of his other tests then you'd think it was decent enough too. He was 84th out of 103 after this;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXYI8hWKyyM&feature=youtu.be

Friday morning he was showjumping, boy I was so grateful that we'd squeezed that 1m15 class in at Beny before we had the snow, otherwise I might just have completely freaked out. It was big and bold but beeuatifully built with a lot of solid colour really picking you up over the fences. As always he was tense and stupid in the collecting ring so we did most of our warm up outside. He was also tense , mouthy and occasionally disunited during his round. I expect this now, it's an expression of his nerves,excitement and anticipation so I do nothing about it whatsoever except ignore.

He is perfectly capable of jumping this height off the wrong lead with his head on one side coming in at a ninety degree angle. So I figure if that's how he likes it, let him get along with it, the more fuss you make of his antics the worse they get. So far the strategy is paying off and I was chuffed to bits he jumped a clear, only 30 horses did and many of them had time penalties so that pulled him up to 58th position;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG19SpNKzC4&feature=youtu.be

So having got that out of the way we thought we'd have some fun and go and visit some of the wierd and wonderful rock formations in the forest.I wasn't particularly surprised by the proliferation of tarts adorning the roadsides enroute to our tourist hot spot.
I was already familiar with the working girls of the Fontainebleau from my stint as a trucker some years ago as a driver for a horse haulage company.On my very first driving trip abroad we were looking to overnight at some layerage in Milly la Foret (just down the road).It wasn't a stop we used much as we tried to push on further south for the first night, but we'd been dropping horses in Paris and the time had got away from us. It was about three in the morning when we pulled into a layby on the edge of the forest to consult the map when out of the bushes a man emerged wearing a pair of tights over his head. The guy I was driving with was experienced both in years and miles but he dropped the map and hit the gas, we really didn't need to know what he was after.
Our little foray into the woods confirms my suspicions that there could be quite a lot of freaks and weirdos in the area, perhaps it's not the quaintest tourist attraction in France?
We were heading for the rocks in the woods to admire their form and more importantly check out their climbing possibilities. Fontainebleau is reknowned amongst climbers as the best bouldering spot in Europe.( Bouldering is like climbing except ropes are not used as you are more often than not close to the ground and moving horizontally or diagonally across the rocks.)

Apparently this is not the most common hobby of the area as we were welcomed to the first carpark by a very shady man who made me feel rather dubious about leaving the vehicle, but he was soon to get in his car and drive off so I was rather alarmed to see he had returned by the end of our little amble round the very scenic rocks and was once more staring at us rather purposefully.
Although the rocks were asthetic and the idea of climbing appealing we both felt exhausted so decided to head on to the next 'gorge' for a quick nap which was bound to be more peaceful than back in the grounds of the competition.We drove down to the hidden car park a couple of miles off the main drag to find a half dozen cars and a group of hikers, so we chose a quiet corner and rearranged seats, pups and gear to have forty winks. Just as I was about to lie down the same shady man pulled into car park and proceeded to amble about, really giving me the jitters but the dogsbody told me to calm down and leave the man to clear off. I tried to feel reassured as I watched him saunter back to his car but obviously I wasn't as a few minutres later I looked out the window to see the guy walk back over towards our 4x4 sit down about twenty yards away and light a fag, all the while staring intently in at us.I can only think the man was into dogging and he had assumed we were too, I can't imagine he was going to get much og a spectacle watching us slumber, but I'd had enough. I had no wish whatsoever to find out what shady man wanted or what wierd and wonderful fantasties were floating round his head.
As soon as he saw us make a move to go he jumped up and skuttled back to his car, driving away but no without a final pull over to stare back at us. I have to say I was completely freaked out and quite expected as we drove out that he'd be waiting to jump us or tail us down the road.Thankfully neither scenario was in the offing and after a quick trip to the supermarket we headed back to base to have a rather noisy nap surrounded by people with a rather healthier( in my opion) hobby.

Saturday was a rest day for us, otherwise known as thumb twiddling, trying not to worry about all the horses left at home. It would have been a fun day climbing at the rocks but our excursion the day before had really served to put me off. Instead after taking Turnip for a gallop round the sandy track round the xc course we into town to have a look at the sprawling Chateau.

Well blimey you can understand while the people thought they needed a revolution with the absurd gesture this pad makes .The doggies were really taken with it, especially since they found the remnants of a drowned fox beside the water that was particularly, fabulously stinky to roll in. Bless them.(Very strange but the the water was incredibly clear, spookily so, I guess fed from the fountain of the spring of the beautiful water that our friend in the supermarket told us of!)

Sunday was an early xc time leaving us the rest of the day to get back, there is little to report other than that Turnip gave me a super ride all the more special since he hadn't even seen a xc fence since his last outing in August at Firle. I had hoped to make a xc excursion somewhere but the snow truly put paid to that. On the whole the course wasn't big not much more than a tough BE100 but it was typically french in that anything tricky was up to height so the skinnies and the corner in the woods were up there. If I had been concerned about any xc fences it would have been water, not that Turnip has a problem but I wasn't sure he'd be confident to leap a big fence into water. I shouldn't have worried, this course the perfect school, with three water combinations in a course of sixteen fences! They began at fence five, the rolltop in the dew pond;

round the corner

followed by fence six a drop into water, jump out and several strides to a pretty tall and very skinny brush;

The third water was right near the end of the course and consisited of a small brush near the water's edge then a big hack round an island in a moat for about thirty metres up onto the island for a brush fence then back down into the water for a skinny. Woo! and by then I think we could say Turnip was okay with water!!
There was quite a tricky coffin with a steep climb to the second jump after the ditch and the corner in the woods was followed by a turn to a little owl hole shed contraption. Luckily I walked two routes to the corner as it was quite sloping ground downhill and away from it. I walked my ideal line and then the probable line I might end up on when Turnip had leapt ten foot sideways becase of a small rock they'd painted white and dressed with flowers. Turnip opted for the sideways leap that carried us down the bank and on to my anticipated alternative approach. It wasn't really a bad fence but it did suck you under it a bit and I had the misfortune whilst waiting at the start to watch a horse do just that. It failed to get it's shoulder up in time and cartwheeled over it. Very reassuring, but Turnip has some merit, otherwise he wouldn't still be here but in a can of pedigree chum.For all his shortcomings he's pretty smart at looking after himself and it's not often he hits jumps despite my best endeavours to sometimes ride him into and through fences, he's no fool ,he just likes to act like one.

All in all I couldn't fault his round, we finished in 51st place out 103 starters scraping into the top half but still fulfilling my aim. We picked up six time penalties xc but he did well to get only these as we trotted the tricky waters to make sure we didn't make mistakes or miss tricky skinnies.

But perhaps the best part of all was the trip home, it had been hanging over us a heavy cloud. We'd decided to come back across country so pulling in was easier and less dangerous than on the hard shoulder and the sedalin was primed.However Turnip was the angel, he didn't even scrape or bang once, perhaps his nights of solitary confinement had helped him accept being alone more graciously.It certainly wasn't fatigue since the first thing he did on arriving bcak home despite a xc round and five and half hours in the trailer was start chasing poor Twiggy the pig round the garden.

I am exceptionally grateful Turnip put up such a good show, it was a huge amount of work to set the animals up here to leave and rearrange once we returned. It was hugely worrying to leave them especially with no grass in the fields only hay left out and Pearl so close to foaling. There just seemed too many possibilites for disaster but thankfully everyone bar Kevin stayed put and with the very kind help of Ian and Marie topping up and checking twice a day everyone was able to fend for themselves for a few days.Just this once everything went aswell I could have possibly hoped,I guess every once in a while we all deserve a break!

No more snow.

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 21:37:52 +0100

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 little tits the hump, since they reckon all the sunflower seeds belong to them.the bird feeder also provided me with perhaps one of my best wildlife sightings to date, I was sitting at the pc in the evening probably guiltily perusing some Daily Mail celeb story when I should have been writing a blog when I saw a big blonde shape swoop past the window. The next minute it was on the windowsill, who should be swivelling his head and staring in at me but Mr. Barn owl him very self. While he wasn't generous enough to stay there for me to grab the camera he was blinded for long enough to look in and make eye contact with me, which seemed to freak him out so he took off. I can only imagine he'd come in for a mouse busy munching on the seed, but I very much doubt I will ever be privy to such proximity again, he was less than a metre from me.

Anyhow I digress, this last two months hasn't just been about bad weather and getting Turnip out, it's also been about getting the other guys back on the road too, Charlie, Red and Cloud have been in my next tier of priority, mostly because I really wanted to get them out to the young horse training shows as they only really run to the end of March, mid April and not only do they offer a really great atmosphere to get them going in without having to bother with too much glamming up they also more importantly provide the environment for rectifying problems as they may, or hopefully may not, come along. The best part of them is that not only will the collecting ring be full of ponies but the main ring too and if you're going to jump in France you have to expect to be sharing the arena with at least one other horse during your round, so you'd better get used to it.

First call Red,

Charlie

and Cloud

all visited Auvers for their first 'concours d'entrainement'. They all went very well and were very sensible, well Red was a wally while Turnip jumped, he had to visit their competition stables, but two gingers together, what can you expect? They feed off each other!
I have to say the highlight for me of our trips to Auvers was seeing the romanies

We got lost on or way the firsty trip but it was well worth it as at the first roundabout we espied this apparition coming towards us. A family of gypsies in a converted caraven, the sort that should be pulled by a car being pulled by a pair of native cobs.
They passed us when we pulled in to consult the map so you can see what I mean

sawn off caravan with sat dish!
I always fancied taking a year out to try the life of a traditional romany, but I'm not sure this kind of caraven appeals. I fancy the quaint painted sort. I take my hats off to these guys though, it might be a romantic life through the summer but in February? You must be one tough cookie

when this is your camp for the night by the motorway,( we passed them on our route home).
They all seemed jolly happy when they trotted past us for our video though,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blnJn02rrh4&list=UUGIIOedOX-L_TKVr9iw693w&index=7

I'm sure a travelling life is much more fulfilling is you have horses to tend every night, well if you like horses that is! Charlie and Cloud they must be bonkers, " You mean the cob pulls the van? Oh boy, you get the van to give the cob a lift, like us guys!"
Charlie and Cloud visited le Haras du Pins;

Cloud by now felt she was an old hand at this sort of jazz, so not only did she jump sensibly, without any spooking at anything, she also tied up like the sweet girl she is at the trailer by herself while Charlie took his turn.

Charlie jumped incredibly well, he was a little more animated than Cloud and had I admit had his moments outside, but what's in the ring is what counts, right?

He then also proceeded to convince me of my convictions that his stallion days are over by tying up outside the trailer with Cloud and hogging the haynet, pigwig.

I can't tell you how delighted I am about this, he was never one to show off his stallion self and would quite happily travel alongside mare or gelding before but I really think I would never know he'd been entire now despite the fact he's only been gelded six months. The proof is waddling round the field though as Pearl labours through her final days of pregnancy carrying Charlie's one and only sprog.

Red and Charlie have also been to some shows, they both on different occasions accompanied Turnip down to Rennes

to this amazing facility that shelters under an absolutely huge single pitch roof big enough to cover a 60x 40 arena with adjacent warm up arena and run of stables along the lowest end. It's a fabulous idea, allowing masses of natural light in from the high end and also presumably generating huge amounts of electricity from it's solar panelled roof.
It was Charlie's first show and he was a little overawed by the envitable (in France) pop music,proliferation of horses and spooky great shed. Ooooh and did I mention it was arena eventing aswell! Poor Chubby he hasn't seen a xc fence in two years! But he did alright;

Red didn't get to go inside on his trip down he had to use the outdoor arena, luckily it was a better day but the dogsbody couldn't get any pictures as he was hanging on, with grim determination, to his best friend Turnip, who still to this day refuses to stand in the trailer alone, bless him. Anyhow Red did well it was a bit of a jump start for him with 1m05 prep class and he had one pole down, but he tried his hardest and I was pleased with him.

They also both went up the road to Beny Bocage for the 95cm prep.This was where Red should have started, it was a nice little confidence boost for him

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gXEFRDrJNU&list=UUGIIOedOX-L_TKVr9iw693w&index=1

Charlie looks pretty flash in his video,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBE52yUH4k8&list=UUGIIOedOX-L_TKVr9iw693w&index=2

but unfortunately it only lasted three jumps as our man on the ground had to go off to rescue Red, he'd decided he wouldn't stand alone at the trailer and set off to find his mate Charlie.
The announcement distracted me too and have to admit his round didn't continue in quite such a delightful vein, but we got there in the end. AND, he was a good boy in the collecting ring mostly and he doesn;t seem to think he's a stallion any more at all.My main aim of this spring was to test the water with him and see how the hormones were flowing, but as ever Chubby likes food not women.

So that's where we're all at for the moment, Visa, Monty and popeye have all been restricted to jumping in the field at home, weather permitting because for the moment all these competition venues are far away and when you only have a trailer the fuel costs soon tot up.

And of course my biggest news is that despite the weather doing it's damndest to make my life a living hell, it looks like Turnip will be setting off to Fonatainebleau in the morning. We gave him a practice trot up yesterday, it went really well. The dogsbody walked him up, turned him back, they did three strides of fancy trot steps with bum slung sideways before Turnip got away and went galloping up the chemin. It doesn't bode well, but I wouldn't expect less.

I have learned a lesson before we've even left home. NEVER try and have eleven horses alone over the winter and NEVER NEVER try and go away and leave them for a week when the weather's foul, the grass still isn't growing , you're expecting a foal and you have seven pups. It has taken me three solid days to set everyone up, I cross my fingers it will work out, though I expect another three days of rectifying probelms on my return AND we get to share the truck at night with the three pups and three dogs that are coming. Gosh, I can't wait!!

Not out of the woods yet....

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:52:01 +0100

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 long time, probably because Turnip makes progress at the pace of a snail so you have to look back over a pretty extended period to notice the improvement.

Last year was pretty cruel to us, it seemed that my riding was in recovery so that I once more had two functioning legs and the neck strap was no longer necessary just to balance for canter across the field so I was pretty sure it would be the year Turnip first flew. That never seemed to happen thoug, it started badly with Kev's neck abcess delaying our return to the UK, then the weather put paid to most of the rest of the year cancelling events as fast as I could enter them.

When we did manage to set foot on a showground it wasn't always a disaster, but Turnip being Turnip we always managed to conjure up some magical reason to miss out on a place YET AGAIN.

At Twesledown he did his worst test ever, but poor fellow he'd been munched by mozzies in the trailer while I walked the xc course;

So I guess once again he found his excuse and what with jumping well; clear xc with only a pole down in the sj, he was let off the hook( meat hook) yet again. We had a pretty close call on the xc when he got bogged on landing after a corner, I was really beginning to worry about his landing technique, but on arrival back at the trailer overheard the girl next door saying to her dad that they'd just pulled the corner out of the course. She'd jumped a couple of horses before me and said her little horse nearly didn't make it over the fence having got bogged on the take off side, apparently she'd screamed at the fence judges that it needed taking out of the course.It was pretty scary for her and me, but I'm sure some other horses were saved a sticky situation.

Turnip's next novice outing was Aston le walls and this time it was me who let the side down,I have to commend him for doing a very reasonable dressage test. He arrived at the warm up buzzing and proceeded to leap around like a lunatic, scaring the wits out of me and anyone else who rode close, but I adopted a new aggressive approach and was pretty mean. We were fortunate to have a neighbouring arena on only one side so a little bit of discreet timing allowed us to avoid doing movements down that side at the same time as the horse next door. His show jumping was spot on and clear accept that I forgot to tighten my girth so after the fifth fence the saddle went whoop, he had a little buck and I had to stop, straighten the saddle, do up the girth and get restarted. We restarted four or five strides out from the treble, but this of course is where the flying Turnip comes into his own, nothing please him more than a little upset, broken rythmn and tricky approach so he was a bit of a pro to get out of that scrape, just meant the pesky judges gave us five time faults and four for not moving forward. No bonus points for smart horse getting stupid rider out of hole at all! He was clear xc despite a spook at the photographer after the hedge;

but my oversight cost us a place AGAIN, suppose we were lucky it didn't cost us a limb!

His fourth and final event last year (yes you read that right, FOURTH and FINAL) was at Firle Place. If I'd hoped we'd cracked the dressage nut I should have thought again. He was a dick, no excuses. His showjumping was passable no poles but four faults for a nap at the entrance, as expected the quantity of spectators and stalls around the arena freaked him out a a bit, unfortunate it was lunchtime but he's got to learn. Then a really super xc very close to the time,for the first time I asked him to motor on a little and he was more than happy to oblige;

Once again again though the cavorting around in the dressage arena cost us a place and he only managed 11th, still our best placing yet.

That was as good as it was going to get in 2012, despite my grandiose plans of Gatcombe novice and Ligniere CIC*. The very day he was accepted I put him out with a pony at my mum's who promptly ( and I mean promptly), kicked him in the knee and split it open. I let them go, heard the crack turned around andTurnip was licking a split and bleeding knee. That was the last time that Turnip is ever allowed to play with anyone in the field, he's always egging, taunting,nipping, bullying, so you can't blame his companions, but it gets a bit costly and bloody annoying.

It was apparent he wasn't lame and it had done little more than split the skin, but it was a right through wound right slap bang in the centre of his knee. The vet said 2 to 3mths recovery, the vet was not wrong.

When he visited St Lo for the dressage grand national back here in late Autumn he still had the smallest place in the centre to heal;

His test there was probably his best to date, a little up tight but pretty obedient, only one false start, a canter stride as we made the last turn for the final centre line.

So 2013 was set to be an uphill challenge where I discovered if the kick to the knee had affected his jumping ability, or perhaps, optimistically, the little break would have chilled him out.

Of course no amount of break was going to chill Turnip out so he set out at Rennes for his first showjumping class like a prime Findus beef lasagne candidate. Jumping , bucking, screaming his head off, you'd have thought he was four! But he still jumped a clear in the metre and 1m 10 prep classes.

From there it has been onwards and upwards, he jumped at Rennes again, coming 3rd in 1m10 GP. He jumped at Auvers at the young horse training show, we just told everyone he was five.

Then the weekend just gone he went to Auvers again for 1m10 prep which he jumped clear, despite feeling like a dead dog, a side effect I'm fairly sure of his flu jab on Monday.Had a pony club moment before we started when I decided it would be a good idea to show him the water features incase he deemed it necessary to jinx at them during our round. Far from looking at them , he buried his head in the bamboo plant beside fence nos 2 and flatly refused to extract himself despite my best rein hauling. I sat there red faced, incompetent and embarrased while my pony ate the arena dressing.

On sunday he did the 1m15 GP at Beny. By sunday he was back on pogo- ing form , much to my relief as I make a really horrid job of jumping him when he's flat. He had a pole down when I pushed him through the treble too fast and as ever he jumped like a screwy show jumping pony, but that's how he likes it and how I've learnt to ride him so that's what we'll go with while it keeps getting us round. The good news aside from the fact that he came eighth and won 4 euro, enough for a sausage, is that he wasn't dangerous in the very tight collecting ring, a little weyhey but the novelty of playing chicken with passing ponies seems to be wearing thin. He was also a heroic little jumper as I decided to have a melt down prior to going in that the jumps were too big for us. Not helpful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQH48XKIJ2s&list=UUGIIOedOX-L_TKVr9iw693w&index=3&noredirect=1

As may be guessed all of this frantic showjumping activity is not because I've decided to jack in eventing and take to the poles but because Turnip has been selected to go to Fontainebleau next week. Selected is probably a little generous, allowed is probably more accurate. We have been asked if we can please not make a scene, make minimal reference to being British and control our antics in the dressage arena. I have spoken with Turnip about this, he nodded very sagely and said yes, he understood, it is huge gesture of trust he has been saddled with and he promises to behave, but I'm not sure I trust the glint in his eye. For starters such a long trip alone and stabling away is going be the biggest adventure he ever embarked upon, for seconds he hasn't be able to do one dressage comp this year yet and xc schooling has also been a no go. I have a ditch and a couple of skinnies at home but that is where it's at.If we even manage to get to them through the snow.

We had hoped to fit in at least one schooling expedition but as you can see that's not really an option;

So although everyone has rallied round to do their best to actually, at very long last, get Turnip off to his first CIC*, we've still got a long way to go. It's hardly the preparation conditions I would have chosen, hacking Turnip around on snowy fields and chemins, even on the semi cleared roads I can reach is a disaster waiting to happen, but hopefully a smaller one than leaving him unridden to go loopy.

To add insult to injury he is absolutely desperate for a new set of shoes, the farrier was booked in for tuesday but is currently still snowed in at his house in Bayeux. Tomorrow is friday, we have to leave on wednesday, the window of opportunity is slim and whilst I have replaced his shoes a little over the winter I really don't fancy setting off to his first big event with a set of DIY shoes done by my good self. Not that it will be as horrific as it sounds, my very good and generous farrier back in the UK kindly sent me back with sets of shaped stud holed shoes, but I still feel my own basis farriery skills leave a lot to be desired.

S as you'll appreciate we're a very long way from being out of the woods yet.

All this had begun to get me down, not least since feeding and watering eleven horses in deep snow is damn hard work;

So we gave in and did what should be done in snow

which Eeny recently renamed Chicken poo( due to her sudden penchant for rolling in said filthy substance) thought was wicked,

but her mum was less taken with it.

And yes, you guessed it, those saggy titties gave it away, she and Mud's have popped out another batch of care bears,

this time Jim the jug is dad,

So should you need a cute pup you know where to come!!

Ted takes a tumble from the snow queen!

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 22:38:31 +0100

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 good idea to crack along with her while still a baby.
Was that a great plan or what? Maybe it's just that Peggy is a sweet girl and has had us fooled by her madam antics these last couple of years? Or maybe all of a sudden she is a reformed lady? She has quite played the princess, trying to be caught, leading like a doll, making lovey dovey faces for a tickle and a pat.
Infact as you can see in the photo above, the one fly in the ointment was Ted, having not ridden since last spring he seems to have gotten a bit rusty so while he could pose for a quick standing photo

When it came to schooling we had to tie him on, God knows what aids he was giving Peggy, but she took it all in her stride with good humour

Infact she was so good for a couple of days that I dared to get on her myself and despite weighing a good bit more than Ted she continued to enjoy it without hassle, panic or excitement.

,Last thursday before the snow came we went to the beach to celebrate my
th birthday.

As you can see we had a great party in the dark

having had a quick ride on Cloud

(who was a little over awed by the magnitude of space but held herself together well)

and Ginge beforehand;

Ginge wanted to do galloping with all that wide open sand, but lets face it,when doesn't he want to do galloping?

It is of course my favourite beach, across the bay from the Mont St. Michel. My favourite place in Normandy and possibly one of my top ten in the whole world, the feeling of being alone is superb.I have only surpassed it in the australian outback and american wilderness.

Stupidly before Christmas I thought it would be a cool day trip to make a fruit cake and a flask of mulled wine and take a ' trip out' to the other side of the bay visiting the actual Mont itself. It was bound, I felt certain, to have the most superior Christmas lights in the land.
( Never do this, the Mont is always best viewed from a distance so one is not forced to fight the heaving waves of tourists in the actual town itself. Furthermore their Christmas lights are pants, I don't know why they bother!)
However it was very interesting outing indeed since the Mont st Michel has just become the very latest disney attraction don't you know?
It is no longer deemed safe enough, satisfactory enough or lucrative enough to have the tourist hordes parking on the causeway sands a stone's throw from the entrance arch. It is now necessary to park ones car on the terra firma end of the causeway at great expense and then either take the free shuttle bus or walk. Walk, imagine?

Yes we walked

because we had all the dogs on a Christmas special. And what a walk it is if I may say so.

All the more exciting made by the absolutely idyllic final approach

Okay, maybe that's not fair, we'll try another angle

or another

Oh well , whatever angle you see it from right at this moment it's not particularly pretty, but I'm sure for future visitors the improvements and repairs will be worth the trouble and expense they're currently expending.
While you can't knock the stonework repair, I do find the idea of the new railway shuttling the masses back and forth rather repugnant. It was all beautifully quaint, old fashioned and french to park on the beach and worry about the tide coming in and washing away you car. I fear it will be rather like starring in a movie in the years to come.

It's certainly a beautiful place, a truly impressive feat of engineering,
one the doggies were absolutely fascinated in.

Well they loved sniffing the dog pee up all the secret passageways

And posing for all the tourists who despite being surrounded by marvels were still seduced by the cuteness (perhaps it was the madness) of five small dogs on leads. Mini excelled herself at doing cutesy faces and wiggley bum, Eeny was just terrified of so many new faces, colours and languages trying to pet and caress her.
By the time we'd finished tramping round the beach then racing up and down the steps, streets and alleys the idea of the long dull walk back to the car was rather daunting. So we enquired if doggies could use the shuttle bus

That's a yes if you carry them. Lucky they're small and the journey short.
For the cost of the parking, you might expect a seat but we felt we'd got a fair deal as we dipped out on the pay parking and nabbed a last freebie on the verge beside the car park entrance. Be warned though you'll have to come early or be lucky, there's less than a dozen even when double parked.

Since cost cutting is by necessity the order of the day I yesterday thought that I would do a home hair dye job to rid myself of the grey onslaught. I'd love to have fancy blonde highlights, though maybe not done in France where there is tendancy for people to come out looking like Tony the tiger.( If you ever saw a supermarket checkout girl round here you'd know what I mean). It is well beyond my meagre means at present however, so considered,' how wrong could I go with a natural henna home dye?'

Very wrong it seems. But Turnip and Red thinks it's cool I'm in their club even if noone else likes gingas.

Ps.
Turnip is is detention since he buggered off with Charlie at Brecey today. I'd just had a little jump on the both of them and was heading back to the trailer with one in either hand while the dogsbody made payments etc. when all of a sudden a dog ran over the bank. Turnip and Charlie reeled together and took off up the road, paused at the recycling bins to discuss direction then galloped off together towards the main road, and then straight on over it, (gratefully I hadn't yet caught up), away up the chemin, bore a right along the road at the top, then paused for breath and a snack. Watched approach of puffing council worker (who'd just legged it up the chemin to attempt rescue), decided unanimously against being rescued and took off again in full flight down the road for another mile or so with council worker's mate's van in hot pursuit, tailed eventually by us with the trailer. At long last the pair decided road running was dull and peeled off for fodder hunting. They then saw approach of my one angry self and had a row over next plan of action. Turnip wanted to gallop more, Charlie wanted to fill his face. Turnip dipped out of running further alone, so Charlie got caught. Turnip cussed him under his breath. Both frog marched back to trailer and loaded quickly and crossily under barrage of abuse. Had jolly big belly laugh together all the way home.

Plodding on

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 21:54:39 +0100

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 don't know how to be ridden,( and giving me ear ache that they don't have any steering- telling me!)

Turnip has been doing dressage at Brecey

as has Charlie

Okay so maybe there's some work to do here here, but they did do some good stuff in between that kind of stuff

While Red ( nursing a cough picked up from Beny) has been chilling at home with the piggies

Although we're pretty tired after all this pony stuff, it's been kind of nice to have a break from doggies.

As you can see, we have in recent times resembled Battersea dogs home

taking in extended family ( they're all relations of Muddy or Mini) while their owners travelled to foreign lands.

We've also had some festive feedback from more recent litters

Hizy

Diesel

Huggy

Rita
and

Gypsy!

It seems like we might be a puppy farm, half of Normandy seem to have one of our doggy descendants. It was the impression we tried to escape when Gypsy's new mum came to choose her.
Muddy and Mini had both had pups within the same week so we had eight pups all looking for new homes and it seemed a good idea at the time to advertise the litters separately and limit prospective purchasers to viewing this litter or that. It worked very well and all were sold, awaiting collection UNTIL Gypsy's new owners decided to pay a surprise weekend visit to her a week before her departure.
A mystery car pulled up and who should issue forth but Gypsy's new parents, being a chicken through and through I fled to hide in the stables leaving eight pups scampering and yapping boisterously round the garden. This left the dogsbody in a rather awkward position, having to explain away an extra four mystery pups.But thinking fast on his feet,( there being only about a dozen steps from car to front gate), he grabbed the nearest handful of pup fluff and dumped them in a horse feed bin in the garage.
The dogsbody was then presented with a box of chocolates by Gypsy's proud family, who had driven all the way from Cherbourg, a good hour and a half, just to check up on her.There then ensued a most embarrassing ten minutes, heard by me cowering in the stables, of Gypsy being petted , cooed and clucked over whilst the odd muffled yelp was emitted from within the garage.
Goodness knows what they must have thought, the chocolates were nice though, so I'm pleased they made the trip. Looks like they still love Gypsy too!

And cattily, to finish; you must have seen the Duchess of Cambridge's new potrait?
What do you think?

Oops no wrong one

Aah yes that's better she must be absolutely thrilled with it's accuracy. Potraying her at her pudding faced,forced smile, dungeon lit best.
Crikey we all have bad days and it's easy to have a photographer capture a bad angle, but for a painting! This really isn't kind. What kind of lighting did he use, wasn't he looking to light her from her best possible angle?
Let's hope noone paid too much for that one.

Happy New Year!

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 22:22:12 +0100

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;

even though we did get spooked out by the donkey and mini ponies;

Ha - we thought they were pony eating monsters at first!

So here's hoping you guys managed to have a night even half as wild as ours!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFdn5vUn1os&feature=youtu.be

And lets hope everyone's fun continues throughout the year.

Bon Courage!

Of fairs and fears

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 23:15:53 +0100

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, to make a pretty riding pony;

And getting back on Cloud;

We decided to have a real break from all that horse type stuff and go to the Foire Saint Luc at Gavray;

Take the trip with us;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epatcIQXMC4&feature=youtu.be

( or if you can't be bothered with that, take a quick look through the pics below)

Okay , okay so there are horses!

and horses;

fancy horses;

gypsy horses;

mini horses;

(Mini donkeys even, 1500 euros a piece. Not many salami in these little fellas for that price!)

Often there are in excess of a thousand horses so we are told, but hey, there's lots of other stuff too!
It's a traditional French fair a la Normandie after all. There's row upon row of stands of agricultural type stuff, machinery, sheds, pepinieres (don't know what these are called in english actually, but they sell baby trees and shrubs etc).

Then there are avenues of food stalls;

and rotisseries

This man spit roast us the best lamb 'gigot' I have ever had in my life.
Perhaps it was in the wrapping of his grandson though

;

The fair also has the rows of plastic rubbish and tat you might expect, but strangely to an english person they also sell puppies. An area will be dedicated to puppies in a cages in a way we wouldn't find acceptable, we might sell poultry and rabbits at the markets in such a way, but not puppies, not anymore.

All in all I love the autumn fairs, they have a foreign side to them, it's true. There will be wagons of horse that get loaded up late in the day to go to slaughter houses and some perhaps may get long and terrible journeys. But I shall never forget the look of utter astonishment when I spoke to a frenchman about a little trotter he had from me. I said to him that I never wanted the little horse to end up on a lorry bound for slaughter in Spain.
He looked at me in utter astonishment,"Where did I get such an idea? A- he wanted the horse for keeps and B- why would the horse go to Spain? A horse would go to the local slaughter house , not Spain."
So I think it's perhaps best to accept that in being a foreigner some things are bound to seem, well, strange.

Our other big Autumn adventure aside from taking Turnip and Red to a few competitions like the 'Grand National de dressage at St Lo' ;

Red 6th;

and Turnip 5th;

And indoor jumping at the cattle market of St . Hilaire, where they shipped in tons and tons of sand so we could jump at night under lights;
Red 7th;

Red had decided he wouldn't stand in the trailer alone that night so while Charlie was out looking round he did a back somersault and got himself stuck upside down. It was really quite traumatic trying to get him out whilst he'd wedged himself upside down against the tailbar in the dark. With a valour I wouldn't have found in daylight I smashed the bar up and out at the same moment as he struggled to get up. It freed the bar and he tumbled down the ramp backwards onto his head, flipping up like a gymnast, not a great lump of idiot horse who'd done well not to have killed himself.
It served us well though, depsite few his knocks, bangs and skinnings he was none the worse for wear and went into jump clear, come seventh and win us enough money to buy a well earned mulled wine!

Despite all these exciting advetures I still thought we should probably spice up our life a little more by climbing down the road at the beautiful waterfalls of Mortain;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRx0BeiDiCA&list=UUGIIOedOX-L_TKVr9iw693w&index=2

And then after that because we seemed to have partaken of enough action and adrenalin fueled activity we partook of some gentler ones. Some pretty strolls through the glorious normandy countryside;

on foot;

and on Charlieback;

Lastly but by no means leastly we decided to treat ourselves to the new oriental eatery just recently opened in Vire;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V_22sXVCLc

but was that not the scariest feat of them all?

Merry Christmas

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 20:37:02 +0100

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.