Friday 17th

Welcome to the first edition of Smartie’s email diary. In order that he should not feel left out, Tetley will share this diary, as will any horse that joins us here at Anker’s Knowl.
The rules for this diary are

I welcome criticism and comment, I really do. BUT I have a real big thing about people who make their criticism snide or hidden. If you have something to say, please spit it out, and back it up with your reasons. For example, I once published a photo on a forum. One of the responses was "what a shame, you can never get a good photo when you want one, can you?". Of course the person who wrote it wanted to criticise but didn’t have the guts to do so. She was waiting for someone else to say "What’s wrong with it?" so that she could reply with her criticism, and then say "I didn’t say anything, I was asked to explain so I had to". THAT sort of criticism I will not accept and anyone who does it will be removed from the mailing list. I hope you think that’s fair.
I’ve also recently been criticised fro giving bad advice. I didn’t think I had given advice at all, never mind bad advice. So, to make it explicit, nothing that I write in this diary should be taken as any sort of advice. In fact many of the things I do are at the very edge of safe behaviour. It is only my own experience which makes them safe for me; they would not necessarily be safe for anyone else, or their horse.
So, as my dear Dad would say, "Them’s the Rules" and I hope that you are all happy with them.
Stop press – I have new horse. I am picking HER up on Saturday, yes she’s a mare, I do have mares occasionally. It’s been a bit of to-ing and fro-ing. I saw her last week and liked her very much. A mare which I am absolutely sure was an ex-racer. In the days before mandatory passports, dealers used to by ex racers and throw their passports away and sell them as "3/4 bred". This mare was 7 and had been bought at 6 "very thin". Most inexperienced people would not know the difference between "racing fit" and "very thin", so if she was 6 and racing fit, she may already have had 4 whole seasons racing ( at 2,3,4 and 5 years) and have a lot of wear and tear. Also, I can buy an ex racer which would be just as green as she was, and just as nice, for £1500 at Doncaster. So to me she was worth £2500 tops. Her owner didn’t accept that, but a day later, she has now rung and said that she likes me so much that she wants Tia to come to me and will take my offer. I have no doubt at all she is worth a lot more, so I’m really happy.

This is her:
http://www.horsemart.co.uk/DisplayHorseDetail.asp?AdvertRef=HM545D591
All hell will of course break loose when there is a new horse around, but that will give you an incentive to watch out for the next instalment of the diary!
Well what about poor Tetley? He is now definitely unsound behind with spavin. The vet is coming tomorrow so I can get advice on what to do with him. I’ll update you about that over the weekend.

And Smartie???? Who’s he J ? Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, HE’s been interesting. A total twit for two days. His routine was disturbed yesterday because I kept the pair of them on the yard waiting for a saddle fitting. I’ve gone and splashed out on a WOW. If Tetley loved the treeless, he was ECSTATIC about the WOW. Even slightly lame behind, he was moving his shoulders superbly. More on that when it arrives, I’m sure. They are made to order and it will take 5 weeks.
Tam and Em came to see the saddle fitting and as Tam said, she could see that Smartie was "wired" just by driving into the yard. He was twitchy and jumpy. Stupidly (I can be dumb sometimes!) I tried to put him into his stable using the reins of a bridle around his neck. He tried to run into the stable in front of me, threatening to squash me in the doorway. I stopped, he ran in, leaving me at arms length with the bridle in my hand and the reins still around his neck. What happened next? Well of course he pulled free. He ran out of that stable and into Tetley’s and out of Tetley’s and back into his own. In the process treading on the bridle twice. And slaughtering it! Unfortunately, it was a comfort bridle where the headpiece is absolutely fundamental to the bridle, and he broke it in two places. One £80 bridle gone for a Burton. Stupid me!

This morning was astonishing, I am still musing over what happened. He was still in a daft mood. He came out of the barn first, which is unusual. While Tetley put himself in his stable, Smartie ran back into the barn, which is unheard of. Just really stupid! Once he was in his stable I went to take his rug off and he wouldn’t let me undo the straps at the front. He ran away to the other side of the stable.

Now look, I never claimed to be a saint. And you’ve all said that you like my diary warts and all. So here we go. I lost my rag. After all, I’ve been undoing that damned rug every morning for four flipping months! I picked up a brush and threw it at him! You are NEVER going to guess what he did. He turned and came straight to me, licking and chewing. I stroked his forehead and then tried to undo the rug again. He ran away again. I picked up another brush and threw it at him. He came straight to me, licking and chewing. I stroked his forehead. I tried to undo the rug. He ran away. I was struggling for another brush so this time I threw a plastic curry comb at him. And he came straight to me and I stroked his forehead. And then I undid his rug.
Now any Monty Roberts fan will tell you that this is classic join-up behaviour, only usually you don’t have to send the horse away by throwing a brush at it! I don’t recommend it, after all you want to brush the horse and him to enjoy it (which I did after the rug was off and he was very happy!!). But it worked, and whatever works goes, with Smartie ;-). To be honest, I’m now getting signals that I would expect from a yearling. It almost feels as if we are weaning him. I think that is probably a mark of huge progress – he actually is growing up in defineable stages that you can see. The fact that they are 3 years behind where you would expect is just showing that his behaviour now is because he never grew up then. It gives me more hope that he will eventually be able to learn to be a sensible horse.

Progress on the harness is that the pole is up. The pulley modification has been very complex and Allan hasn’t finished them yet. But I am told to expect more stepladder testing at the weekend, and horse soon after.

There, that’s it for today, I’m exhausted and you probably are too.
C.