At this demo the private audience horse was really interesting to me, a grey mare (creatively named Mare-y) who was incredibly sharp. She had come as a potential starter but was barely handleable enough to touch let along saddle up. She had mud on her hindquaters that her owners were unable to brush, and reared during her physcial examination with the tour physio Sue Palmer. Large areas of her body and legs were simply out of bounds. We worked with a long stick and a sponge on the end in order to touch some of the trickier areas wihtout worrying her too much. The idea of the long stick is that it is easy to keep the touch on her when she reacts by kicking, running or rearing, without your adrenaline going up and the need to restrain her or punish her - and then when she stops reacting, the touch can be removed.
After this we worked to put a roller on, but had to look at plan 2, a small elastic strap like a tiny surcingle, and then plan 3, just the end of the longline rope, as even a roller was going to be too stressful for her. Monty showed us some awesome rope tricks that really needed to be seen to explain, in order to get the first 'girth' on in an easy, stressfree way. It was definately one of those sessions where I was incredibly grateful to have the Dually, longline and training I have had so that no matter what happened with the horse, I could keep my feet still, stay in control and calm and so be helpful, not stressful, to the horse.
The starter was a nice big bay chap belongling to Ruth Edge, he was pretty sharp, but went ahead without complication. I do hope he does well in his later career as I'd really like to start being able to pick out names of horses I have started in Horse and Hound write ups!! Good luck to everyone involved with him.
We had a look during prepping at a tractor phobic horse, who just didn't show as that tractor phobic, he didnt put a foot wrong as the huge yellow tractor drove up to his nose to his owners astonishment, so he didnt take part in the main demo. Its so interesting how the environment can change the horses behaviour, it isn't that he usually makes up or exagerates his fear, but an open space, and no human at his head, and a tractor advanceing from the distance is a very different stimulus to the confinement of a roundpen and an indoor arena. Its worth baring this in mind in all our training so that we are choosing the right environments for succesful training. Ally is going to carry on working with both the grey mare and the tractor horse so good luck Ally and owners and let me know how you go!

Rosie was a little 2 year old grey and white filly, who had never been out of the field she was born in as she would not load. We went to pick her up with pannels before the demo as the owners knew they simply would not be able to load her. The pannels can be used as a management or training tool to simply take all other options away, build a wall behind the horse that gets smaller until they choose to load. As such, we did no handling of her really, and no leading work, so it was only during the demo that I realised how 'into pressure' she was. Rosie was really quite spectacular at rearing, whenever she felt the dually tighten to ask her to move forward or back. I suppose she had never really been told where to go before and had no reason to comply. You could see her start to work out that the dually loosened when she stopped fighting with it, and so she became more maleable and controllable, but I think there is a lot of groundwork still to do with Rosie! We used the pannels in the demo to load her, and she even nearly thought about pushing right through them, which is something I have hardly ever seen. But they are amazing for taking the fight and the stress out of the decision to load, its so simple and obvious that forwards is the best option so she loaded pretty quickly and then by the end of the session loaded onto a different vehicle for her owner without pannels at all.

Thanks again to all the helpers especially Ally and Paddy who helped me with the horses. No I didn't get the heart rate monitor working again so I'm going to get in touch with the suppliers and make sure I'm not making a huge mistake somewhere - we tested it on Paddy and it said his resting rate was 220, now I know he's keen but he's not THAT excited (is he?)

We stayed in Carlisle that night and then caught traffic after an accident on the way home the next day, and so poor old Jim (Tour manager, www.jimgoddardhorses.co.uk) drove for 12 hours to get us back. We have now worked out the best type of potato-based food, the soundtracks to the best muscials and disney films, the answer to the fate/free will debate and the meaning of life so if you need any of this info just ask!!