Splash

It is 6.55am and I am on the train to Sheffield Uni with Martha. So I thought I would take this opportunity to write a blog as I haven’t had much time lately. On the New horse front Abbi went home – too nappy and bucking. Billy came and went – bucking and Jimbob will be staying. The 15hh horse that was supposed to be arriving didn’t but there is the possibility of another 15hh horse coming soon. I had a message off splash’s owner yesterday which I found quite amusing. She said she hasn’t seen Splash for nearly two years but she has seen pictures of him on our website doing show jumping and dressage so she figured he must be worth a bob or two now and she wants to sell him and do we want to buy him. The answer to that is NO definitely not. Splash is an 8/9yr old 16hh shire cross. Yes he does do the dressage competitions here even winning his class last Sunday. BUT it was a walk trot class as he is not controllable in canter and there was only 5 adults in the class.  He had no warm up beforehand otherwise he gets too worked up. Show Jumping competitions – well as some of you have already witnessed are horrendous. It amounts to a wall of death for the very brave or very stupid. Lessons are manageble for fairly strong riders, he is never ridden by novices. For some reason that is beyond me or Amelia the people that ride him really like him. I think this is because he has no malice in him and they think he genuinely trys to do as asked. I found out some history about him the other day that explains a lot. Apparently before we had him he was ridden and jumped by a young girl who is brave but inexperienced in the schooling of horses and therefore was probably ridden like a big pony. Splash is a horse that trys to please and therefore would’ve tried to jump whatever was asked of him but he would’ve been scared and she wouldn’t have noticed probably jumping him higher than he was confident to do and making the mistake of thinking he was loving it cause he goes like a bat out of hell and hurls himself over. The outcome of this inexperienced schooling of young horses Is typically Splash, a horse that is tense and scared and does things fast out of fear and unfortunately will probably carry that baggage with him for the rest of his life. It is such a shame because his type is the sort that with calm, kind and sensible handling he should have been a calm and steady horse. I was thinking more on the lines of giving him the summer to see if we can make any further progress with him or sending him back.  Martha was impressed with the course on offer for Journalism and Sheffield is now looking like the favourite. I have been enjoying these jaunts around the country viewing prospective Universities. Although the train journey today was less than impressive. Why is it dearer to travel at peak times when there is less chance of getting a seat, surely it should be cheaper. I must admit to being somewhat peeved at paying £153 for two return tickets  from Cardiff to Sheffield only to find that we had to sit on the floor between Bristol and Cheltenham Spa. Having arrived back in Cardiff at 8.30 with 40 minutes to wait for the connection to Pontyclun we decided to get something to eat We found a Take away on Mary Street called Wok and Walk, Stir fry in a box How cool is that

Posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at 1:34 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.