Today was best day ever! We started by watching Smoke learning to accept the saddle and accept the rider. It was very special for all of us who knew Smoke from the scrappy little bundle of legs that Liz first brought home from James 18 months ago to the very striking horse he is today.
James then went through a "plan within a plan" with us. This will help us see how far we are along the programme for what we want to do with our horses.
Next we watched as the team helped a dressage rider get her horse to be confident in the collection ring with lots of other horses around. Using lots of approach and retreat, and friendly game the changes in the dressage horse were pretty instant and James sent the rider home smiling with a plan for how to keep it going.
Both Jo and I were pretty apprehensive about the afternoon's ride up to the newly cut stubble field both for different reasons. We went through the phases of the "plan within a plan" but my confidence had plummeted and felt that I was not up to the new things that James was teaching us! I was that close to saying I wouldn't go out.
After we set off I started to feel better. Hacking is my thing and what Liquorice is best at. I soon felt well in my comfort zone again.
Liquorice and I were nearly always at the back and the group had to stop and wait for us to catch up several times.
James started to make comments like "here he comes" and "if he didn;t have such a long mane and tail he wouldn't be so slow!" I gave James the "finger" and he threatened to sneak round at night to chop it all off, so I threatened to sneak into his house at night to chop off things that were important to him!" What a merry band of travellers we were!
James took us to a dew pond for us to walk through and I thought "Ha! Liquorice is never going to walk through that!" However, all that on line cross country training paid off (thank you Tracy Duncan 1* Parelli Professional) Liquorice took one sniff and walked straight through. At the top of the hill we had drinks and Mangnums and James asked us all if we had entered the competition to win a day at JRFS. You had to say what would be the best thing about winning a day at the JRFS but I said I couldn't think of anything!
After walking through a copse of trees and using them to practice turning we made our way back down that hill to the Royal Oak in the village.At one time always being at the back would have made me very anxious as I would have thought that I was holding everyone back but James is very good at turning everything into a teaching point and told Jo and I to come to the front and told everyone else to try to cause their horses to go no faster than ours! Some people managed it!
The new management of the Royal Oak want to encourage more horse customers and have installed a stone water trough and bring big fat carrots out for the horses. They also have free WiFi for horses with iPads.
Read about Day Three - http://carrotsinmypocket.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/jrfs-day-three.html
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