mulesuk

Just got back from our free Savvy Club weekend with James Roberts in Devizes.
We had great fun. Malaga gave me a fantastic relaxed side pass on a twenty two foot line while we were preparing for our liberty session on the second day and I even got a CANTER out of him in a circle! (he stopped and looked at me with ears pricked forewards "was that good?"..."Right I'm off to see what everyone else is up to",swings head under rope whips it out of my hand with his neck and shot off )
James sprang the news just before Lunch that we were going to be partnered with someone else and would be doing Savvy Spotlights after lunch!So we had just an hour to work out what our equines could do best,design a coarse and work out our timing.We had three songs lengths to work to(About ten minutes) I got partnered with Elaine who had a coloured cob so we both had left brainers and were pretty matched in experiance.
There were some great displays and then it was our turn....I never new ten minutes could go so fast!At first Malaga freaked out and went straight up but I did the friendly game and he relaxed enough to do a nice roll and get a good laugh.He was a bit hesitant with his halt and back up but Elains cob was very good at it and Malaga did well doing change of pace and a lovely Back up straight down the center.We managed to get the figure of eight round the barrels forewards but only one figure of eight backwards because the music ended (I'm sure our songs were shorter! I think they cut out a bit of Speedy Gonzalos )
We did manage to put our relationship first,use the whole arena and have fun so were happy.
We had "No equine games" in the evening in which there was a lot of cheating It's funny how eggs on an egg and spoon race stay on when held upside down!and I won't mention the limbo dancing!!
The second afternoon we had a go of working at Liberty as there were too many to ride in the areana (Twenty eight horses and a mule)and some people were working strange horses they had borrowed.
We all had to form a circle then someone was called into the middle and took off the halter and were then left with the truth
If the equine decided to leave it was our job on the outside to re direct it back.Several horses decided they would rather go and talk to Malaga so I had work to do.We had to wait quietly for a hour while the others worked and all the time Malaga tried to distract me and get my attention on him......then it was our turn! I took him into the middle,released him and he turned his bum and walked off!...well that told me didn't it! With the help of James and the others I managed to get his attention back and we did some work but we have got to work on the relationship better than that.
The last girl had a lovely session with her arab.It did lose concetration once but after a short while it locked onto her again,pricked its ears forewards and trotted back to her...we've got a bit of work to do for that!
There was a girl there taking photo's so I will post soe if she puts the on the web

Sounds fabby!
Look forward to the pohtos

Look on
http://www.clairespelling.com/#/gallery ... gust-2009/
Malaga is on dsc0153(first day)
And his liberty session
DSC0553 toDSC 0593
(I love DSC0554....it catches what he was thinking so well )