Thursday 18 March 2010

A Rehabilitated Angel


Angel on arrival in 2009...and today


Angel has been absolutely fantastic recently, and I thought he deserved a blog post of his own, as well as a snippet of footage of him that Sam took a week or so ago.

I haven't got any clips of him hunting yet, but he has been a joy to have out - he was even complimented by the master last week, for his lovely attitude and his improvement over the season :-)

His progress has been impressive, I think - he arrived with little experience of anything other than an arena, after being imported from the Netherlands. His previous owner understandably couldn't hack him out much as he was lame within 3 days. After speaking to Caroline Trayes, she bravely sent him here but he arrived on 2 bute per day. He was initially desperately unhappy on uneven ground and struggled with even the gentlest slopes.

He has an interesting medial deviation to his hooves, which is critical to his soundness, but which may become less dramatic over time - I'll post photos of his feet another day.

Meanwhile, although its taken time, he is now a horse who loves going out over Exmoor, is confident on his own or in groups of horses and can go over rocky tracks, up steep hills and through even deep, boggy ground without losing his cool. An angel indeed :-)

1 comment:

cptrayes said...

I'd have kept him but he was too small for me! Well done with him, he stood just like Campero does at the moment.

C