Pee Wee And Passage

After being away last weekend at a Marike De Jong dressage clinic in Somerset I decided this week would be spent pootling about the yard with the horses (after I had recovered from two leaving do's involving a midnight and 2am finish).


The OH decided that as he was up to date with all the trimming that he would ride Max, of course he tells me that at the yard when all his tack was at home, so we cobbled together a treeless saddle, pony length non-dressage girth and Jamie's bridle that is cob sized with a pee-wee bit.  We thought it may go either way as horses either love or hate the pee wee, Max wasn't quite in the hate category, confused probably is the best description of it.  Jamie goes very well in it, he has a shallow smile, very small tongue and low palette, typical TB mouth.  Rosey loves it, she has thick lips and a large tongue and can be a bit gobby in her baucher French link.  Max has a similar mouth confirmation to Rosey but he wasn't very responsive in it, this was demonstrated when Charlie cantered home in front of him and Max decided he wanted to go too.  N got a lovely passage from him, lots of sit and power, he felt he would have pinged if he had taken more of a hold though so don't think we will try that experiment again.

Fitted hoof boots to a customer whose farrier has told her to remove the front shoes due to the hoof quality.  Nice mare and owner I hope it works out for her.  Farrier had removed the shoes but not trimmed at all which meant it was impossible to fit a boot, we ended up taking a rasp to them ourselves but really needed nippers.  Farrier came back out to tidy up, still not quite as good as a barefoot trim but good enough I think to get going.  Fittted Gloves and the horse moved quite nicely in my demo pair even though they were a size too big, discussed the financial benefit to using Gloves at £108 per pair and lasting around a year plus, to a half a set of shoes at £40 or so every 6-8 weeks, she may consider taking the hinds off as well.  Could be another horse and owner going barefoot without really realising it .......