Can't get out, can't hunt but CAN take lots of pics and video clips in the snow :-)
Then uploading them indoors next to the woodburner is the perfect way to thaw out ;-)
Thanks to Sarah Braithwaite and her cool headcam for the ability to video handsfree while riding!
Saturday, 7 February 2009
Snowing again :-)
Thank goodness for barefoot horses - a friend had one of her shod horses fall over with huge iceballs in his feet yesterday. I imagine even turnout is no-go for them, but our horses are loving the snow and are careering around the track having a ball :-)
They haven't ventured into the back field, probably because the snow has drifted so deeply at the gateways that its hard work even plouging through it!
Our hound puppies still think its the most marvellous stuff ever - and its keeping them and the horses absolutely sparkling clean :-)
They haven't ventured into the back field, probably because the snow has drifted so deeply at the gateways that its hard work even plouging through it!
Our hound puppies still think its the most marvellous stuff ever - and its keeping them and the horses absolutely sparkling clean :-)
Friday, 6 February 2009
...nothing is leaving Rockley today except emails!
We ended up having about a foot of snow, but the winds were so strong overnight that its piled up way deeper in places :-)
We couldn't resist recce-ing the lane in the Land Rover... but round the corner there was a really big drift...
We couldn't resist recce-ing the lane in the Land Rover... but round the corner there was a really big drift...
Totally snowed in!
Woke up this morning and we have MASSES of snow...at least 6 inches first thing this morning and its not stopped yet...
Felix and I had to plough through the blizzard, with Andy and the dogs helping, to move the sheep, which were only one field away from the house but rapidly getting stuck in the snow. One we saw just in time as it was being buried by snowdrifts against the hedge, and being a sheep it was just going to lie down and die(!).
Horses thought it was quite exciting at first (apart from Jack, who is slightly traumatised and has decided that its safer not to leave the barn or set foot on the snow at all!) but have now realised that driving wind and snow in your eyes is most uncomfortable, so all are now undercover eating haylage.
Poor Ghost lay down to roll in the snow, and got himself cast in a snowdrift in the middle of the yard...he was looking rather like a large hairy beached whale, and we thought we would have to dig him out, but fortunately the sight of Andy running towards him with a bright orange spade shocked him so much that he managed to thrash himself upright...
So its been an eventful day already and its not even 11.30...Will update later as to snow depth...!
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
Now its frozen slush...
Not so pretty today, and a whole lot more dangerous! Nearly came a cropper several times trying to push wheelbarrows up slopes and skidding on the ice (!)...
The powdery snow yesterday was a perfect surface to ride on - as long as your horses are barefoot of course :-) but today its lethal, so the horses will have to content themselves with being on the track till it thaws. I think it will be gone by tomorrow, but the ground was frozen underneath so this afternoon its all still pretty grim.
Still, snow does a fantastic job of polishing up hooves...
By way of comparison, here are the hooves on one of the rehab horses, the top photo taken yesterday and the lower photo when he arrived in December.
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Sunday, 1 February 2009
Hector - wild and free (!)
All about Hector this week...First of all I took him back to see the vet who diagnosed him with navicular in July.
We are running a research project here on horses with navicular, deep flexor tendon lesions and caudal foot pain to try and demonstrate how they can improve aftr rehabilitation here. The project was inspired by Dexter, and was the brainchild of his vet, and we are now trying to document the progress of as many horses as we can.
Hector was an obvious choice, as he arrived just after Dex left, and his original vet kindly agreed to reassess him this week and do a lameness assessment on the same basis as the one he did in July, so that we had a good comparison.
The assessment involved a fairly tough lunging test - trotting a 5 metre circle on tarmac overlaid with grit, on both reins. When he first came here, he couldn't even lunge a 10 metre circle on sand without being unlevel, especially on the left rein, so it was good to see him going round confidently last week on a much more testing surface.
After performing so well on Thursday, it was only fair to take him hunting yesterday :-) Charlie was the master's horse again, and we all had a lovely day, right up until Hex and I managed to catch his bridle on an awkward gate-catch and the whole thing came to pieces...! We were still a good couple of miles from the trailer, ad it was getting dark, so there was nothing for it but to carry on, with Hex wearing the remains of his bridle as a fetching but completely useless necklace :-)
So the last couple of miles (3 open fields at canter, a mile or so of (admittedly country lanes) roadwork in the dusk then 2 more fields down steep slopes), we just went totally au naturel, relying on the fact that he is very good in traffic and that at least Charlie and the master knew where they were going
I must admit it wouldn't have worked so well at the beginning of the day, when Hex had much stronger opinions about where he should be going and at what speeds but as it was we both rather enjoyed ourselves :-)
What made me smile though was imaging what was going through the minds of the drivers who passed us..."No effing shoes, no effing bridle, riding along in the dark..."!!
We are running a research project here on horses with navicular, deep flexor tendon lesions and caudal foot pain to try and demonstrate how they can improve aftr rehabilitation here. The project was inspired by Dexter, and was the brainchild of his vet, and we are now trying to document the progress of as many horses as we can.
Hector was an obvious choice, as he arrived just after Dex left, and his original vet kindly agreed to reassess him this week and do a lameness assessment on the same basis as the one he did in July, so that we had a good comparison.
The assessment involved a fairly tough lunging test - trotting a 5 metre circle on tarmac overlaid with grit, on both reins. When he first came here, he couldn't even lunge a 10 metre circle on sand without being unlevel, especially on the left rein, so it was good to see him going round confidently last week on a much more testing surface.
After performing so well on Thursday, it was only fair to take him hunting yesterday :-) Charlie was the master's horse again, and we all had a lovely day, right up until Hex and I managed to catch his bridle on an awkward gate-catch and the whole thing came to pieces...! We were still a good couple of miles from the trailer, ad it was getting dark, so there was nothing for it but to carry on, with Hex wearing the remains of his bridle as a fetching but completely useless necklace :-)
So the last couple of miles (3 open fields at canter, a mile or so of (admittedly country lanes) roadwork in the dusk then 2 more fields down steep slopes), we just went totally au naturel, relying on the fact that he is very good in traffic and that at least Charlie and the master knew where they were going
I must admit it wouldn't have worked so well at the beginning of the day, when Hex had much stronger opinions about where he should be going and at what speeds but as it was we both rather enjoyed ourselves :-)
What made me smile though was imaging what was going through the minds of the drivers who passed us..."No effing shoes, no effing bridle, riding along in the dark..."!!
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