yesterdays own a pony day

Okay so this is the first of two posts that I am going to be doing between now and the end of the day, yesterday was my 'Own a Pony day' with Gatsby and I loved it I came away completely aching but it was worth every single minute of it and I wouldn't possibly change a thing. I had to get to West Hallam Riding Centre for 9am, and when we got there it wasn't looking like the best of starts for Fiona, as one of the livery horses owned by Susan had got Colic, Elaine who works at the yard was working her horse round the outdoor school and trying to make sure that he didn't go down, the vet was called out and came out as soon as possible and when they arrived they gave him an injection and the instructions that every 20minutes he was to be walked for 5 minutes and I think she wasn't allowed hay for another two hours. During the day she seemed to pick up and calm down and when I got to the yard today Susan was riding her round in the school. 

The first thing we did on out 'own a pony day' was start the yard work, Gatsby was having his bedding changed I can't remember the name of the bedding that he had got before but it was being changed to Bedmax, Molly another one of the girls there for the day helped me to do his stable as there wasn't enough tools to allow her to do her own stable. She did the hay nets and water and then helped me spread the bedding out. We took all the old bedding out just leaving the bits that were clean/dry like Fiona told us to, while we waited for Fiona who was with the Vet, we started working on Solomon who is Elaine's horse's stable. We weren't putting new bedding in here so we just took out the dirty bedding leveled out and neatened it up, re-did his two hay nets and then re did his water. By this time the vet had left so Fiona got three blocks of the bedmax shavings down and put them in gatsby's stable. We undid them and made sure that there was no bumps or lumps in the bedding and then started to add in banks on all three sides, and level out the shavings making what ended up looking like quite a good bed. At one point Fiona and Elaine came to look at what we were doing and we were breaking up the bedding but instead of using the tools we were kicking it and doing it the fun way!

Gatsby's new bed!

After this we filled up all the spare haynets so that when they are needed they would just be ready to go in to the stable and they wouldn't need to all be done, they were filled as full as possible making sure that the horse got the most out of it. After this we had time to sweep the yard and then we had a break and a snack and time to put wellies on! It was time to fetch in the ponies from the fields and man where those fields muddy I was scared that my welly was going to fall off, Gatsby met me half way and let me put his head collar on him straight away and then we had to keep walking as he doesn't like to be standing in the mud so we had to walk through it as easily as we could doing without our wellies falling off. 

'Amber there's new bedding in my stable, it wasn't here yesterday where did it come from? But I plan to miss this up really really quickly just because I can do!!!'

After we bought all the ponies in we had a lovely grooming session. We had to groom cracker really quickly because he was being used first as well as Rocky so they were our main priority! All the other riders got split between Rocky or Rascal except me who got to ride Gatsby this gave me an hour with Molly to groom the pony! He looked all cute by the end of it and mud free as just before I was bringing him in he decided that he was going to be a nice horse and roll in as much mud as he possibly could do! 

We then had lunch and it was time for Molly and I's riding! I got on and one of the boys who was on the own a pony day decided that they wanted to watch Molly and I ride. Gatsby was ready to be worked and he felt amazing! He was so well behaved and so willing to drop in to an outline something that I wasn't expecting and then we had some amazing shoulder in's during which he decided that he was going to be all smart and fancy and the little boy said to Fiona 'that's wierd'. I suppose that's one way to describe the moves that Gatsby was doing. The half an hour seemed to fly by and after this we did a really it was the two boys, Fiona and I against Elaine, Drew, Molly and Anna I think that's her name! It was a dead even draw and each runner had to run from A-C and then back again after just riding, I am suprised that my legs could even run by the end of it and man can those little kids move fast! After this we did a quiz and we had to get the names of the horses, ponies, grooming equipment etc. I got the highest mark with 9 and 1/2. So close to getting full marks but I was so shocked that I won it! 

That's all on the own a pony day.

Until Next Time 

A Girl With A Dream