The way to heaven is on horseback

I really feel like I am about to go mad! This year is not getting off to a great start and that is driving me mad, I blame jack for breaking a mirror on the second day of this year! only joking! Well I told you all about my issues with my house over the weekend, I emailed and said that these things needed to be resolved or environmental health would be getting involved, well yesterday morning I woke up to a email saying I was going to be handed my notice and would have to find somewhere else to live. This sent my head in to a bit of a whirl wind as I've been looking for months for somewhere else to live and nothing has come up. Then we found a lovely house that was literally round the corner from where we used to live in oakwood, it was clean tidy and soooo nice! I rang up this morning and applied for the house to get a phone call back this afternoon to tell me that the house had already been let to someone else. To say that I was gutted is an understatement! I've then spe...

Well magic is doing super well, yesterday we did some more ground work with him, starting to really build up the work that he's doing so that when it comes to the time to ride him there is a solid foundation for it in place. So we gave magic a fuss and a cuddle. Then went to work. We slowly placed his roller and his saddle pad over his back and then got to work on slowly doing it up, the idea was to gradually do it all up while giving him fuss so that he saw it as a rewarding thing and not a punishment or something that he does not do. We then walked out to the school and got to work on lunging, we started off on his bad rein (left rein) we did walk work and really built up the idea of getting him to lunge and stay out not fall in. We then added in a little bit of trot, not a lot but enough that he was experiencing something different. We lunged to the left for 3 mins 30 seconds. After this we stopped changed the rein and lunged to the right, this way he was much happier to pi...

So today I took the plunge and went to get magic a lunge cavesson after doing a fair bit of research into it last night. I figured I needed a little bit of help with magics lunging not because he is naughty but because he is green. Some days we will have a really good lunge session, hell be foot perfect and we can get walk and trot work (we haven't started on canter yet). Other days he will do two or three good strides and then decide to stop and then stand there and stare at me or he'll try and decide that he is going the opposite way. Now I know that this isn't really him being naughty it is just him being a baby. So we will keep working on this. However I have also looked in to how I can use this to work on his ground work. The main thing that we need to work on is trotting in hand, and standing and waiting as these are not necessarily magics strong point but in time he will get there.  Above you can see magic lunging today. I will be the first to admit that today...

Magic is finally 2, to be precise he is 2 years, a week and two days old, and he is doing great, he is finally looking loads better. He's healthier, happier and enjoying life. His manners are coming on in leaps and bounds, he's understanding what I am asking to do and he is slowly coming in to work.  I have started lunging him twice a week for no more than 10 minutes at a time, 5 minutes on each side making sure that I work him evenly on both sides. He spends the majority of the day out in the field with his friends but he has now learnt that when I ask him to come in he can come in on his own and it doesn't matter that his friends are out in the field. He's doing so well and takes everything that I ask him to in his stride. He's happy, healthy and safe and that is all that matters to me. I'm not writing a lot tonight as I'm a little bit under the weather but here's some videos of magic working.  Remember that you can check out my youtub...