Summer time ..... and the living is.......

I've had a very boring day in court today and admit to spending time working out what the success criteria were for Rodbaston while two lawyers argued about whether CCTV footage would or would not be used for their case when it finally came to court. And heaven help us what kind of society are we living in where the secondary school of a small rural town with an above average level of affluence has CCTV in the playground?!?!??! Sorry I digress.

When I got home it was summer! I've ridden without a coat for the first time. Tetley is out without a rug on at night for the first time. The deer are settled for the evening 100 yards away, the heron did a fly-past as I rode, a huge hare skipped away across the fields and all seems right with the world here.

Tia has had the day off. I like to give her feet time to recover from the pounding of cross country schooling by letting her have the next day off. She seems very well and very happy. She will school lightly tomorrow. I'm holding off on road work while she is doing so many XC sessions. There's only so much a set of feet can take. But I am pleased to say that they are now growing like topsy and she will have her first complete shoeless foot cooked in about 8 more weeks.

Tetley was standing awkwardly in his stable after eating and resting an hour. His back was rigid from the wither to the hip and his back end was twisted to the left. (interestingly, that stance appeared to be putting maximum weight on the hind leg that he has had most problems with the spavin. I think it is possible that one has got better, one worse, and he has levelled up because of it) He also had his forefeet back under him and his hind feet forward, which is a stance which normally suggests heel pain in all four feet. Anyway, I straightened him out and he seemed to loosen off so I trimmed his feet to give him the best chance, and rode him.

He was perfectly sound. I even tested his hip height to make sure he hadn't dropped a hip to keep sound, but he was level. I fancied a spin on the fields but I thought it would be wiser to stay on the road where I could tell if he was sound or not. I ended up doing a very difficult ride down "the corkscrew", whose shape you can guess from the name. It's the bed of a stream and very rocky and extremely steep, 1 in 3 for much of it. He hasn't done it since before his shoes came off, and he was absolutely fine.

Get this! Half way around the ride I met a neighbour who I know of, but have never met. He was friendly and I said hello and he asked what Tetley did and I told him he was an eventer. So from that you might have thought that he would have worked out that I knew a bit about tack, perhaps? Nope, - he grabbed Tetley's bridle and fiddled the bit up and down in his mouth, saying "this bit's too low". And he actually went to grab the cheek piece to raise it, the cheeky sod!!!

Personally, I hate the instruction to fit a bit so that it wrinkles the corners of your horse's mouth. Another way of saying that is "pulls the corners of the mouth up". If someone did that to me I'd thump them :-) But even if I agreed with him, the last thing I would do is grab a starnger's horse and start adjusting their tack!!!

C

Tetley corkscrew. Sound. Equal heat each hock.