The culprit (left) Disappearing horses (right)
Another beautiful day. We decided that as it was so nice it was time to turn out the two two year old's and the pregnant mare (Velvet Skye). They had been in the Dutch Barn since the middle of December and were getting rather restless. We put them on the horse walker for half an hour first to get the fizz out of them and then led them down to their paddock. We assumed as the two year old's were from Ireland that they would have seen electric fencing before, and as Skye had spent the autumn in that paddock she would show them around. Well, in true 'Doug and Pauline' style it all went pear shaped. We sedately took them down to the paddock, un clipped the lead ropes and off they trotted. The Cloudings Filly then set off at a breakneck speed with the other Needlegun filly and the 'sensible' mare in hot pursuit. Straight through the fencing, dragging it all behind her, ping ping, and then jumped into the other paddock, taking more fencing with her, I was 'ordered' to run back to the farm to switch the electric fencing off. On my way the air was somewhat blue ' bleep bleep horses' I was imagining the state of their legs having been wrapped up in the fencing and then the next stage when they decided the river looked the better option. Having switched the fence off, I got back to see them still hooning around the field but luckily not too maimed and not swimming in the river, so things are looking up. Maybe our luck has changed?!
We had the equine dentist coming again this morning so I only had time to ride out Red, I took her for a fast hack, and oddly manged to get her heart rate up to 186 bpm just at the trot and sustained it at over 140 bpm for 10 mins which is just not achievable when she is with other horses on the gallop. She has got too used to doing the same thing and because she has got such a huge heart the gallops were just not lifting the heart rate.
It was too nice to work in the office in the afternoon so I did some gardening instead.. I had ordered some roses on the Internet because they are very cheap at this time of the year as they are still bare rooted. They arrived today - thirty rose bushes - not sure where I'm going to put them all, I keep forgetting my garden isn't quite as big as before.....
