No Rest For The Wicked!

Well, that's my holiday over then! Since I've been back from Australia, I had a couple of days respite, then back into the swing of things!

I have had some of the horses I started earlier in the year back for a 'refresher' course and am really pleased with how they are going... maybe even a potential superstar or two amongst them! It is always nice to know how the horses go on in their careers. For example, it was great to read in Horse and Hound (7/14/2009) that "Mildred Hubble" has been winning at Novice Level for dressage rider Anna Levy and owner, Hattie Cripps. I started Millie a couple of years ago and have been back to do some groundwork with her on the odd occasion. Millie is a fantastic example of perserverance and patience from both rider and owner as in Hattie's words, "Millie is a witch and in the wrong hands she'd be horrible, but she's very talented!"

As for horses that are in for starting, I have an interesting case of a hand reared horse called Bono. He is a well put together chestnut gelding and I think he will make a good competition horse. You would have thought that being a hand reared horse would make my job a lot easier but in fact, I prefer to work with unhandled horses. They are more sensitive and react a lot quicker to you, whereas with Bono, it has almost been a case of 'Resensitising' rather than 'Desensitising'! I had to spend the first few days working on basic groundwork principles to change his attitude to me around and after a couple of minor arguments, he now leads without running us over and has actually taken to being ridden well!

As for my own horses, we have about eight in work for polocrosse and polo - a mixture of going horses and young'uns. We also have our liveries' ten polocrosse horses in work, so Sarah, Joey and our band of exercisers are getting pretty bored of doing laps of the fields! Last weekend saw the UK polocrosse season start with a nice multi-horse tournament at Ashfields Polocrosse Club in Essex. I took two homebred four year olds who performed above my expectations and our Kent Target team won the A grade competition, even with me doing my utmost to lose it by missing a goal in the dying minutes of the final against Arden! I will blame it on Jack and Rosie who decided they wouldn't sleep anywhere other than with me and Penny in the luton of our truck... needless to say not much sleep was had with them wriggling about!

The end of May sees me and the family off on a little 'holiday'... traveling up to Lancashire to coach and do demonstrations for the newly formed 'Rustlers' Polocrosse Club before traveling over to the Cheshire Racecourse for a Polocrosse Demonstration at the Cheshire Cup Polo Tournament. Lets hope the kids are used to sleeping in the truck by then...!