In the spring, when Han and I were making vague summer plans she mentioned September as a possible time to do a little travelling. After all, it was September last year that we had our wonderful trip to Romania, and September fits nicely in between teaching on the IH courses over the summer, and starting the Autumn Monty Roberts Tour and a new term at uni in October. She must have been quite surprised then, to see the colour drain from my face as I explained that I could not possibly think of doing anything at all in September. Sure, I wasn’t actually committed or booked to anything other than my usual home visits, but it became apparent that the importance of tour (which this time involves the training of 2 youngsters we are taking with us) uni and being self employed was actually too overwhelming for me to consider planning to get away without knowing what preparations I may need to be carrying out - for the whole month. (Yes I see the logic is flawed now.) Han very supportively scrawled ‘Rosie’s month of turmoil’ on the calendar, and agreed to hide in a hovel for the entire month in a sensible and preparatory fashion so that we would be ready.

Actually, its been delightful. My bother got married this month and I was a bridesmaid and it was quite nice to swap my joddys for a dress for the day. Kelly’s young horses have come along really well this summer and I am looking forward to showing them off on tour. (The theme for their section is going to be ‘training the young horse to survive the hack from hell’ so any ideas please get in touch)

I have really enjoyed working with Jim Goddard this summer, his experience in Western training has honed my awareness of many aspects of English training, particularly some of the lateral flexions which he uses with his youngsters on the ground and in the saddle.

We have had some interesting horses to work with this month, Arnie, the intermittent bucking horse, has reminded me that if the gut instinct says its physical, keep looking! It turned out to be a breathing problem, pain (and possibly even a fracture) down one side of his ribcage and a stifle problem that made canter so painful. I have also become acutely aware this month of the importance of the use of the legs when riding. People seem to have developed an awareness of the importance of feel of the riders hands, but the same certainly is true for the feel and timing of the leg aids. I have seen many young horses this month who have begun to develop problem behaviour (bucking, rearing, napping) as a result of not learning to really accept a leg aid softly and willingly.

I hope to be able to keep up with this blog a little more often and to write about my most interesting home visits each week. Our wireless internet connection, which comes from our landlords house next door (with permission of course!) requires us to flatten ourselves to the wall or hold the laptop at unnatural heights in order to get any good signal (do you call it signal with the internet or is that just phones?!). But, with the new term at uni coming up, I will have access to the library computers and can blog from there, and so share with you all not only my equine activities but intriguing facts about human behaviour also! That’s all for now, Rosie x