21 October 2009

It's a day pinched from nowhere, today! My Wednesday web client doesn't need me till Friday, and the severe weather warning of heavy rain and high winds has just not happened - it's grey but calm and moderately warm. So I went driving.

I may have mentioned that my old driving pony - Mr T - has been away on loan for 3 years with a friend, whose husband, despite borrowing him to drive, never actually did so. Husband is now too unwell to drive, so Mr T has come home again. Now aged 22 years, he is very fit and well, very kind and willing, but still an utter wuss about things he perceives as dangerous.

He lived at our place for 13 years from 1993 to 2006 but of course in the last 3 years there have been changes around the area, like pony-eating black and yellow striped "visibility" ends added to roadside crash barriers, and heaps of an unusual, "black with white flecks" grit mixture that the Council have provided this year for use on icy roads in winter. It doesn't heap at the same angle as sand, but much more steeply, and god only knows what T thought the heap was beside the railway bridge; judging by his horrified immobility, he must have thought hallowe-en had come early. But the express train... thundering underneath the bridge while he evaluated the horrible Heap Monster ... he was totally okay with. He went over both motorway bridges okay, or he would have done if the speed-camera van hadn't shut one of its doors as he approached, and while he was worrying about that, he didn't hear a car quietly overtaking him, and turned himself inside out when it appeared in his field of vision.

As for the rebuilding work going on at a recently unsold farmhouse -- well you know how ferocious a one-man concrete mixer can be. He shrank from 13.1 to about 12 hands. The builder turned the motor off, and T went by on pins. I think he'd have passed it anyway, but the kindly action did help. I just sat and talked him through it, and laughed inside.

Yes, "that's not stupid, that's smart and alert". Poor old T has just forgotten that his cruel mother makes him go out solo instead of with my friend's big brown mare to protect him and give him courage. I'm afraid he'll just have to learn to be brave by himself again. If he does his "shrinking violet" act when he's in the lead of the tandem, Ruby (who gets BIGGER when she thinks there is a hazard) will prance right over the top of him!

I wish Ruby would walk the way T does - as though he's a Man on a Mission. He really is a terrific walker.

Now we're home, I've just been widening the steel arch inside the driving saddle I'm using for him. (Don't try this at home - I know what is inside my saddles because I built them, and I know how much pressure I can put on them and where. You can't do it with a traditional tree made of wood because it would break.) I can't remember which pony I built it for but it is tending to slide sideways on T because it's a touch too narrow and isn't sitting correctly. Having added a good 15 degrees of width to it I expect it to sit much closer and have a better, broader, contact on his back, so I can girth a it a bit tighter without causing pressure points. The sliding backband still moves freely. It'll be something fresh to watch for on tomorrow's drive.

Mr T and Ruby are out in the paddock, he's had a two seriously good rolls and she's demonstrated she's still in season (she came in the moment T arrived), and now they're both grazing happily. Tonight I'm going to a horsey quiz where a friend of mine is getting an award for horsemanship - this year she has won the British National Pony Pairs driving championship.

Life is good.