Things have moved on quite a bit since my last blog with outings for both Fantom and Chiara. Wizard has started his nannying job; escorting children and really exciting small ponies. He looks so proud to be in charge, although dancing around when poor Emily (the mum) is leading one of the ponies is perhaps not quite part of his duties!
Dilmun has had a bit of a hit and miss start to his fitness work. An initial two weeks of his walking passed by relatively smoothly with the time walking increasing and the terrain becoming more varied. However firstly we had snow; yes, unheard of in Cornwall and, of course, training came to a standstill. After the thaw we recommenced the walking for a few days and then I had another cheeky little holiday to celebrate a very special wedding anniversary so again training stopped. We have now reintroduced the walking with a little trotting in between and some progress has been made. Both Wizard and Dilmun are eager to do more, and I am hoping to take them to a small training ride over Dartmoor at the end of April if I can find a suitable jockey for Wizard. With all the mud and wet following the snow, all the horses are looking like freshly-wallowed hippos almost all the time and just looking at them makes me feel tired. To add to this lots and lots of, mostly white, hair is falling out and sticking to absolutely everything. Please can we have Spring soon? Fantom had his first outing to Dartmoor to do a 20km ride which was quite eventful.
The day started with everything running late: me, Fantom not being caught, super mud cleaning effort and forgetting the wallet to buy diesel. We did eventually get to the venue and off I went with one very excited horse. As usual, it was wet with horizontal hail to start off with and Fantom soon lost any trace of excitement, feeling that he would prefer to go home. Somehow, he knew the halfway point and the acceleration was immediate rocketing us across the moor complete with downhill body shakes in canter. When we reached the moor gate I realised that, not only had he lost a shoe, but one of his reins managed to become unclipped prompting a quick reaction on my part to avoid a pretty tricky situation. All in all, it was a good training ride for him with plenty of hill work. Both Fantom and Chiara have had their first trip to the beach and both reacted predictably with extreme excitement and eagerness to tackle both the beach and the rather more taxing, dunes. Fantom in particular was rather silly ‘boinging’ around as though his feet were on springs whilst doing 360-degree circles with his head. However, I prefer them on their toes as it makes training even more fun. Chiara’s first outing was a 32km local competition which she had done a couple of times before.
We arrived quite early and were the first to start which meant that the going was at its best and with bright blue skies it was a pleasure. It was, however, a little disconcerting to find a duck swimming in the first puddle we had to cross! Next month both Chiara and Fantom will up the distance in preparation for their more serious races at Windsor and Euston Park in May and June and Chiara will need work on her canter leads as she has a definite preference for the left one whereas Fantom will need practice at balance on corners in canter on both leads. Because of my holidays and the wet and snow, fitness training is a little behind schedule for all horses but hopefully with the Spring supposed to be coming and the horses’ residual fitness, we should be able to make up for lost time.