A chilled Filly

Tuesday 6 November 2012

The rest of the time at JRFS

The following 3 days at JRFS just passed in a blur. Lots more riding on Filly, including another hack out with Josh. She was more confident on this hack and we trotted briefly.
On Tuesday John Hankinson examined her again. At the time she was apart from her field mate, Chester, and so was a bit upset. In truth I think Chester was the more upset and his whinnying was setting her off. In any event she was almost uncontrollable in the box and Josh had to help holding her for the treatment. The good news is that her pelvis which John had manipulated three weeks earlier had remained corrected. John was concerned about her behaviour, however, and thought it might be feed related. We had only owned Filly 6 weeks at this stage and so had left her on the feed that the yard, who owned her previously, gave her. John got out his dowsing pendulum and used it on Filly. He then took the pendulum to our feed bin and dowsed over that. Then without knowing what sort of feed it was announced that she was intollerant to the sugar and starch in the feed and, in his words, it was "blowing her brain". We checked on the feed we had been given and sure enough it was full of sugar and starch. Fortunately we had more or less decided already to put Filly on the same diet as our other horse Bonitao and when we told John he said that feed should suit her well.
On the Wednesday the ride mainly consisted of trotting, and trotting and more trotting. 10 minutes in each direction with a minute break in the middle. During the first session one of the other horses spooked, the rider came off (unharmed) and the horse ran around the school bronking. Now I know better then to loose focus on my task in front of James so I just kept on trotting whilst the others stopped to watch. I was very impressed by Filly. Even when the horse bronked past her she just carried on trotting with the smallest amount of encouragement. James then looked at those standing watching and asked why they had stopped ! He is pretty tough in this way, but boy it gets results.
On Thursday we had the saddle fitter arrive to see if they had a saddle that would fit. As a result I only did half the lesson with James and then missed out on the hack. The saddler did not seem to have a good saddle so that was a bit of a shame. Ritchie was there that day and we had asked James if she could ride Filly. The answer was "off course". So once the experience week folks had finished Ritchie hopped on and had a ride.
Filly has a learned behaviour of tossing the head whilst she is being ridden. Unnerving to start with, but once you realise there is no malice in it, it's just annoying. James has a solution, of course. Whenever she starts tossing her head make her move her feet...a lot. By this he meant lots of circles, hind quarter yields, figure 8 patterns, transitions. Anything to get her mind on her feet and use up the mind capacity to toss her head. Make her concentrate on something else. He quickly got on Filly to demonstrate and within a minute all the head tossing stopped. Ritchie then had a go with a similar result. This was quite a revelation for her as she is used to going slow with our other horse Bonitao. She now had to think fast, change directions on an instant and keep Filly guessing. I think they both found this really good fun and both looked like they were grinning at the end.
And that was the end of my time at James. She loaded into the trailer almost quicker than I wanted her to and travelled home like a star. Compared to the ball of sweat that got out on the journey to James she was as cool as a cucumber. Even the hay net (untouched outbound) was empty.
Her time at James has really really helped her. She is so much more confident at our yard now, walking through deep mud as though it was a pavement, remaining cool when other horses act up and becoming more of a partner to trust. We still have a long long way to go, but there is a solid base to build on.
Thank-you James, Josh, Kim, Becca and all the others at JRFS. 

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