Puzzle and Inca's blog

bitsnpieces

bitsnpieces

Active Member
Aug 22, 2007
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Hiya,

Being as I've set myself a good few tasks for the new year I thought a blog would be a good way of keeping track of the horsey ones!

I have two ponies, Puzzle and Inca.

Puzzle is a 14.1 native type coloured mare (we think Welsh x Trad), she will be 17 this year and I will have had her for 8 of these in the summer. We bought her as a bit of a minx who had a hard life before us so she's taken a bit of TLC, bossiness not to mention the blood, sweat and tears but we've finally got her to a good ridden stage. She had got up to Novice level dressage until we decided to breed from her a few years ago. She's never been back in full hard work since we put her in foal as she had 18 months off for gestation and nursing, then needed some more time off as the foal was on and off ill so Puz was needed for company. Plus the yard we were at had such rich grazing it was difficult just to keep her at the basic level of fitness! But we're now stabled at a yard where the grass levels suit Puz a bit better.

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Inca is Puzzle's foal, she is by Thorndonpark Jet so she is approx 50-45% Welsh Section D and will be 3 this year. She wasn't particularly well as a baby (managed to develop an enourmous abcess within her hindquarter muscle which let to re-occurring colic) but she's well recovered now and you'd never guess she'd had all that happen at 3-6 months old.

So, the goals this year are:

- Get Puz properly fit (was doing ok until all this snow)
- Take Puz out to some VHS shows
- Take part in more Dressage comps this year
- Begin walking Inca out on the roads in hand
- Get Inca fully bombproofed (lots of funky exercises with plastic bags planned for this one)
- Get Inca fully used to wearing tack comfortably


I popped a saddle on Inca for the first time today and she wasn't bothered in the slightest!

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Beautiful horses! Good luck with your goals for Puz and Inca - will look forward to reading about their progress.
 
Well, as Inca is 3 in a few months time I thought I'd start extending the education so I took her for a walk out on the roads. Our yard is on a country lane, which the cars do tend to get up a bit of speed on but you can hear them coming and the corners aren't too blind, most of them are pretty good at slowing down too. So for our first adventure we walked just up a hundred metres or so where there is a corner and a grass verge where we could turn around and come home without being like a "turn around and coming home" type of exercise.

I was so proud of her! The first car we came across was a speedy BMW, who obviously didn't think much of my headless chicken impression trying to get him to slow down!!! I was really worried she was going to panic but she didn't mind at all about the cars. We had a few cars behind us at one point (too near the corner to let them over-take) and she didn't mind that either!

She was such a little angel, you could tell she was out of her comfort zone but she didn't put a foot wrong!

Here are some pics from after our adventure!!!

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Inca sounds like a real star to have walked by the road - they're both lovely looking. Looking forward to reading more.
 
Puzzle is to die for!!!! I do have a weakness for coloureds and she has the "wow" factor :D I used to ride a coloured at a riding school I worked at called Jigsaw. A woman who worked there always used to call him Puzzle, so I would put her right and say that was his second name :D
 
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thanks kathyt1!!

She is my one big weakness in life, I've had her for 8 years this year and we've been through an awful lot together!! She can be a bossy little so and so but we go pretty well together as a pair, I'm working on bringing her schooling back up to scratch as she's had it a little easy for the last few years and she is coming back with great enthusiasm!

Fingers crossed I'll be able to get some action pics of her on here soon. We're hoping to get her out to some veteran horse classes this year so watch this space!
 
Bit of an update...

Haven't managed to hack Puz out for the last two weekends so although schooling has been good she has been a little opinionated and not letting me forget that she would like to be taken for a mooch, managed to take her out yesterday and now the clocks have gone forward I'm hoping to get a few quick one's in during the week.

Am going to an 11 mile sponsored ride on Friday with Mimi + Me so really excited about that! Will be lovely to take her somewhere a bit different and have some fun :)

Inca has been very good lately, we've started going for short walks on the road and the first two times were very good - a little snorty but very good none the less. Yesterday was the third time and she was (for some unknown reason) not in a settled mood at all so it was all a bit of a battle. Took her out for another try this morning and she was much better, I think yesterday has knocked her confidence a bit as she was acting more like on her first time out than her second but slowly slowly catchy monkey!

The yard is changing to proper DIY this week (which I'm excited about as have always kept mine this way) and a stable is coming free on Wednesday so I'm bringing Inca in to be stabled on Thursday with any luck. Really looking forward to it as it means I can start cracking on with her education, am planning on doing 10-15mins work with her every other day just to get her used to being loose schooled and I'll start teaching her to lunge as well.

Other than that, ponies are moulting like mad so lots of grooming to be done!!!
 
Well, we had an eventful Easter weekend! Took Puzzle on a sponsored ride on Good Friday with Mimi+Me from NR - both ponies were total superstars and Puz was ever so proud of herself, you could see the little grin on her face :). We then had a lesson on Tuesday and she was the best she has ever been in the 8 years I've had her - she was just so up for it!!! Really looking forward to some dressage this year.

Inca came in to be stabled on Good Friday, at first she was incredibly stressed and was calling like mad to me whenever she saw me on the yard. It occured to me that when she was stabled before (a year ago) we were in a large American barn so she could see the other horses and her neighbours through the bars. The stable she is in now is normal brick built...I think she thought her ability to see through walls was failing!!!!! hahaha.

She then managed to switch the auto-waterer on overnight a few days later so totally flooded her stable! She obviously was starting to settle in and thought a water feature would be a good addition.

Needless to say she has thoroughly settled in now and has met all her new fields friends successfully. So far so good!

We'll start walking round the roads again this weekend, didn't see the point in throwing more stress into the mix when she was settling in to her new routine.

Really excited about bringing her on a bit this year, got some obstacle courses planned in the school this year to get her nice and bombproof before breaking her in and riding away next year!
 
Inca is just about 14hh at the mo but has a fair bit of growing and maturing left to do. The weather is supposed to be nice this weekend so going to get the camera out I think! She's still quite bum high at the mo. The last few years she's sort slowed right down growing over winter then shot up over summer so really looking forward to how she will be looking by September!

Both her parents are 14.1hh so never thought she'd make more than that, on target for about 14.1 or poss up to 14.2. I'm like a measuring stick addict at the mo!!! lol
 
Well, so far so good this week!

Had my usual lesson on Puz last night and she was her usual superstar self! Really please with how she's coming on now. When she's unfit she's very heavy on the hands and tends to use the rider as a bit of a fifth leg to prop herself up with. even though yesterday she wasn't necessarily super round the whole time she was bending well, stepping lightly on her feet and was light in the hand. We did a bit of polework and the end then guess what.......a teensy tiny jump!!!!!! I had a total flid fit at first even though it was only about 6 inches (get scared of her terrible cat leaping which is about 4 feet higher than anything else!) but we did it and did it nicely as well!

Even when I lunged her over a few jumps tonight she was ten times better than her usual self and was actually quite nicely balanced....and no cat leaps! So am thinking I might try and practice a little bit once a week. There's a 1ft6 jumping course up the road sometimes so I might aim to do that this summer - that sounds so sad but jumping is the one big skeleton in my horsey closet :)

I also lunged Inca for the first time tonight, it wasn't really much in terms of productivity but bearing in mind she'll only be 3 in June the purpose was only really to get her walking in some assemblance of a circle around me in a relaxed fashion. She was pretty good it has to be said! We have a small school and a large school in the yard so i just took her in the small one and worked in a corner so she didn't feel she had anywhere to pull to, I started off walking around with her then backed off gradually. The only prob we had is that she knew her old field mates were further down the pathway that the little school is on so when she walked in the direction of the field then had to walk away from it again there were a few little tantrums and a few times she tried to turn herself round but we worked through those and by the end we got a few nice circles all in walk :)

I was very proud!!!! She's still settling in to stabled life, but she is getting there. Unfortunately she's at the age where when she doesn't get what she wants there is a little tantrum but they're getting smaller and smaller now.
 
Inca had her 3rd lunging lesson today and was very very good!! Puz had the vet come to see her today and I think she's just tweaked a muscle so another 2 weeks off work and some bute for the next few days and hopefully she'll be back to her usual self :)

Have planned Inca's first show for May 16th as the pony club who use the field directly opposite our yard are having an open show so will take her along for some fun :)

Pics of Inca lunging today and Puz enjoying being groomed by my OHs mum:

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Puz was falling asleep as it was very muggy!!!
 
I'm tying to get more pictures of Puz - she's so beautiful!! the probs is that I only ever get pics when my OH comes up which isn't all that often :( ....need to work on collaring someone else! She's off work at the moment and I have a few days off so will have to see if I can get some of her if I tie her up.

Hopefully I can take her to a show on May 16th so there'll be hopefully some from a professional photographer....she srcubs up really really well :)
 
We took Inca to her first show today! It was only the mid-surrey pony club open show that is held in the field opposite the yard but it was too good an opportunity to miss for a first show being as I didn't have to worry about transport. We just did the condition and turnout class early in the morning so it was a least stressful as possible.

She was generally quite well behaved apart from a rather impressive (not) two legged display in the ring, but when she settled she was very good and walked round the showground nicely. So all in all although we had some hairy moments I was pleased that we've done it and was generally pretty happy with her as she does tend to get overphased easily so was almost expecting her to have to come home......was also pretty happy with my own handling skills as they haven't been put to that much of a test for quite a few years!

So another notch to add to our experience chart

There was a photographer there so will post pics when I can.

Poor old Puz is still not quite right so was looking a bit miserable when everyone else was getting plaited up and she wasn't, bless her cotton socks. I'm hoping that she'll be ok to ride in the next few days, she's starting to look a bit fed up and missing her rides now....poor lil ponio!
 
I haven't updated this for a while!!

As I put in my other thread, Inca is now lunging like a little pro and I've started doing some bombproofing with her with great success. She also seems to have come out of her shell a bit more now.

So today we went back in the big school and got the tarpaulin out again, she was really full of beans so spent most of her time running around like a hooligan! Once she looked as though she'd tuckered herself out I hooked her up on the dually halter and we did some more work with the tarpaulin, which might as well not have been there, got it up over her back/neck/face with not so much as a shuffle so I'm very pleased with my little lady!

gave Puz a nice bath as it was so so warm this afternoon :)

Pics of Inca today:
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Loose a bit of beardie fluff and tummy hair..... and bob's your teapot! A sleek and shiny gorgeous girl.

Compared to the pics you posted in March she is looking so much more grown up
x
 
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