28 March 2005
Today was a tale of learning - Ruby learning about driving in company, and me learning that I am getting OLD and starting to have serious Senior Moments. I mean, what silly C** sets off for a day out and leaves her favourite old driving pony tied up in the stable where he can't reach the water bucket? Yep, I did it. Fool that I am. I was so wound up about taking Ruby to her first proper drive, in the horsebox, that I clean forgot to go and untie Mr T after I'd taken Ruby out of the stable where they share the space in 2 side by side boxes. Fortunately my husband saw and let him loose ten minutes after I had gone.... slapped wrist for Sue.
However! Back to the big red girl. Ruby walked up the ramp into the horsebox like a trooper, no doubt thinking of feeds and perhaps associating the tail bandage with previous trips to the stallion :-). She had her little feed, then I shortened her tie rope and added a second at right angles, to stop her nibbling the harness hanging in the next partition and make her stand in the most stable position in the box space. She is used to travelling facing forward in a cattle trailer, so the idea of being in a wider space and standing diagonally with her bottom facing forward has been hard for her to grasp. I know from experience that all my other horses have voluntarily stood this way in the same or similar horse box spaces, and once they get the hang of bracing their bottoms in the leading corner, you scarcely hear a thump from them the whole journey.
Ruby protested about the horsebox ramp being put up by starting to paw. We set off sounding like a marching band's Big Drum. She pawed for several miles, then it went quiet. I drive very carefully with horses (which earned me brownie points when I passed my minibus test and the test sheet comment "very smooth drive" from the examiner) so I just thought she had got used to the idea that pawing would not get her out, and she had settled down. However, when we arrived and lowered the ramp, what she'd done was to get her foot over the rope, not once, but twice. She looked alike an old lady studying her wool - knit one, purl one, drop one. She had her head at knee level and a distinctly chastened air. She was sweaty, but not panicked, and there wasn't even a rub where the cotton rope had been looped round her knee. We freed her and next minute she was pawing again and managed to get her foot on top of the OTHER rope this time. So, from now on both the ropes are going to be shorter (and they were, on the ride home - and no tangles.). Mr T was too easy - he just used to go patiently to sleep :-) Horses like him lull you into a false sense of security. I remembered, too late, my old Rosie (Ruby's aunt) who also pawed, and got her feet caught in things, and never panicked....
We were early for the drive.... Always a good thing with a pony who needs time to learn what's going on. We left Ruby in the box with the ramp down while we watched other people arriving on the field. One van had to be towed in by tractor as it couldn't get a grip on the damp muddy grass. (We were OK with our double-wheeled back axle.) Ruby neighed at all the new horses but went back frequently to her haynet - probably as a displacement of the excitement. But it worked. Several people commented on her colour and thought she was a Dales because bay is now relatively unusual in Fells (unless, like Rosie and Ruby, you are from Sleddale stock which has been bay and brown for generations beyond memory).
The weather was better than we'd expected; we'd had some heavy rain overnight, but although it was not a sunny day, it wasn't windy or really cold or wet, and so it was ideal driving weather for ponies still in their winter woollies. The grass is just starting to grow, the sheep are lambing, but the trees and hedges are still bare. The views up to the Pennines are spectacular. The lanes around Appleby (our venue) are wide enough for cars to pass a convoy - with care!
i unloaded Ruby once she had had time to take in the scene, and we harnessed her up but without putting on her bridle. I rolled the trap out of the horsebox and she pricked her ears but didn't flinch as it bounced down the final 8" from the ramp. Then we let her pull at her haynet again while we had a look round a cone course that had been set out. Some people had put to and were trotting about by then, which made Ruby snort with excitement - I could hear her from 200 yards away! I walked the course (a futile exercise as it turned out - more later!) and then we put Ruby to. She had got over her whale snorts very quickly, and was calm again. I took care to get the kicking strap just right. Ruby HAS kicked out exactly once (2 days ago when restrained from passing a comrade being ridden). The strap worked as it was supposed to! She did no damage to self or cart, and yesterday's drive which was more exciting produced no kicks at all; but I certainly wasn't going to do this VERY exciting drive without it.
We got in the cart as soon as we had put to, and I drove quietly round the outskirts of the activities. Ann, my "groom" for the day, is a neighbour who rides out with us on her Connemara, and she was thoroughly enjoying herself (she has a Shetland whom she drives at home, but Bracken can't keep up the pace of the big horses for mile after mile). I kept Ruby moving quietly along. She wanted to jog and express her excitement, but the ground had a bit of cut in it and she had to work to pull us, so she settled down. An old horseman who is a friend of both Ann and myself always says,"When you take a young one anywhere, don't let it stand still. Keep it on the move and it'll be all right." We had the room to do this, and Ruby worked calmly for me. By then, most of the drivers had put to, so we worked our way quietly to the gate and followed a mare of similar size and speed onto the road: Tara is a Welsh cross cob, fast but sensible, and I was happy to ride behind her. Her owner Amanda set her off at a good walk, and Ruby dropped in behind, pulling a little and wanting to jog, but taking my restraint well. She doesn't drag at the bit but she does get strong, so I worked with her, holding her only so long as she was jogging, then letting her relax when she walked. All this was repeated over and over as we walked along! Not long after, some of the others who had followed us came up at a trot, and the rhythm of their feet in the tarmac set Ruby wanting to trot also, so we did have a little tussle, but nothing major. A difficulty is that when excited and being restrained, Ruby curls up to the left and throws her right shoulder out; so I know that once the ground dries up a bit, we're going to have to do lots of steady schooling to straighten her up (though I think this excitable "curl" is probably going to be difficult to cure.) We met quite a few cars but the steering proved sound and we didn't hit any :-)
Anyway, after a while we got going into trot, and that suited Her Majesty much better. She still wanted to go faster though and we had several bursts of canter and attempts to drift right to overtake! However, there was nothing bad going on in her head and when, after a couple more miles, I asked Amanda if she minded us going in front, Ruby sprang forward and went into power mode the moment I told her to go. When we came back to walk, Tara caught her up. I thought Ruby could "walk" but Tara is 15 hands to Ruby's 13.3 and she really strides on!
By this time we were onto quieter roads heading out towards Long Marton and Dufton, and beginning to hit the hills. I think Ruby began to get the message at this point that fighting the bit to go faster was not such a good idea, because she found her energy was really needed for the work. She didn't give up on me but she did come back a little more easily! We had one "scuttle" when we met a noisy train going over a bridge just as we approached it, but all was well.
Ruby and Tara changed places for lead every so often and the rest of the drive followed a good 300 yards behind - in fact for much of the afternoon we hardly saw them. Some of those big hills really made the horses work. Ruby dropped her backside and powered up them like a hero with huge swinging strides. (I'm sitting here now with the same big grin on my face as I had this afternoon.) This is some horse, even though she IS only a pony. She just loves her driving.
Towards the end of the drive, a big black and white gipsy cob joined us - terrific bone and feather. The driver kept him behind us. (When we got back I was quite glad of this as it turned out the cob was a stallion! What a distraction THAT would have been for Ruby, who had thought anyway that getting on the road in the horsebox meant we were going to stud!) After taking a long steep slippery downgrade relatively sedately (for Ruby) we met two helpers on the roadside who asked if we wanted to take "the water crossing option". Staying on the road avoided this. I wanted Ruby to do the crossing as we have only driven into water once so far. Amanda however wanted someone to give Tara a lead as she doesn't like water! So Ruby went ahead. I asked Ann to shout back to Amanda to keep Tara back in case Ruby had to stop and think about it! We trotted along a narrow grassy and muddy track cut into the side of the river bank, and there under the trees was Trout Beck, running quite full from the night's rai. It has sandy banks and a stony bottom. Ruby understands stony from her life on the fell, but SAND? What's SAND? She had to dither a bit and have a good look before she trusted the strange stuff and would put a hoof on it. After that, she popped into the water and trundled straight across; and the same on the return loop. The water was about 2 feet deep in the deepest part. I heard later that Tara had tried to jump the whole beck, all 20 feet of it...:-) But we were having too much fun to look behind.
By this time we'd been out about an hour and fifteen minutes, and were nearing the end of the drive. I looked on the map tonight and I think it must have measured about 8 miles. Ruby had been sweaty before we started, due to her argument with the tie rope, but she wasn't any wetter when we got back than when we set off (except for the legs and belly from the river!) and she was still keen to trot as we came down the lane to the field.
When we arrived back, we could see people attempting the cones course that had been laid out. I kept Ruby quietly walking till it was our turn. Some people get very competitive and rush their horses, and I didn't want Ruby to start getting hot about something that is essentially a test of accuracy. We have driven briefly through pairs of cones at home, but not much, because the ground is still very wet on the farm and I get told off for cutting it up! So a quiet drive through was all I wanted for today. I've already said I'd walked the course, haven't I? Second senior moment of the day coming up: I drove through pair 9 backwards immediately after going through the start! However, everybody just laughed at me, and Ruby didn't know any different, so we just went back and did it properly second time around. I think we hit one cone. What I really wanted was what I got - calm forward movement, listening to me, getting the idea of driving straight for the middle of the gap. We weren't there to win... In any case the prize was just half a dozen farm eggs! (I told everybody that I'd driven through 9 deliberately in order to go Hors Concours.) Tara won with a time of 48 seconds and Ruby was fifth in 1 minute 18, which was perfectly satisfactory. Mr T, who now adores "playing cones" and does it well, did HIS first ever round in about 2 minutes 30, the stickiest I have ever seen, so Ruby's much smoother venture into the game was very pleasing.
We unharnessed and rubbed her down, and then she had a nice relaxing walk about, with a thick denim sheet on, nibbling the grass and having occasional mouthfuls of water (just to please us I think - she was much more focused on the grass). Then once all the gear was reloaded, she went back onto the horsebox, and travelled home quietly, only pawing a couple of times and NOT getting tangled up. When we turned up the road home (how did she know? there are no windows in the box and she has only been transported up it once before, 6 months ago) she started whinnying.
She and Mr T were allowed to nibble grass in the yard after that. They ended up in the garden because part of the fence has been taken down, but T has been my lawnmower for years, so I wasn't too bothered. But I did have to go rescuing crunched daffodils afterwards :-)
I bet Ruby is telling T huge tales in the dark of the stable tonight. "And I had to walk through a river, can you imagine? but I beat them all, I showed them how to do it. I'm the fastest. I put them all in their place. Yes I did, I'm the best." And Mr T will just yawn. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Been there, done that... If you don't want that haynet and you'd rather talk, just step back will you? Then I can eat it for you!"