Why I do what I do...

God, Im beyond tired. I feel like I need toothpicks to prop my eyes open. Between having to stay up until 4am every night to watch the eventing live on tv form the Olympics. Training wild horses by day, and organizing fundraising for my upcoming trip to Fiji, I feel I'm burning the candle to the core,at both ends.

Luckily I have such amazing wild horses, who want to work, and that put up with a trainer who was defintly not as alert as usal today.

For me this Fiji trip is really important,I loved my time spent in Egypt. Working with the animals and also the people. I know Fiji will probably be the same, at times heartbreaking at other inspiring. But I think it's important that when you can you do your bit to help other, whether it be animals or people. This is what got me into training wild horses, to be able to show the potential of these animals that otherwise had no future, to save a few lives. The work I do with Kiwi Care Team, I do for the same reasons, hopefully to help improve a few lives, and offer relief to those suffering. I know I won't change the world. But animal welfare is defintly an issue that's close to my heart, and at the end of the day makes me feel good about myself, keeps me driven to do more,see more and help more. It's and adventure as well, and a adrenalin rush, working in exotic places like Egypt as well as training wild horses. So really maybe all I actually am,is an adrenalin junkie...although right now I feel like I need a shot of adrenaline just to keep me awake.

For those who maybe wernt readers and didn't know about the Egypt work, here are some photos from the trip, maybe you can see what inspires me to keep doing this kind of work.

Finally photos

Okay so it was weeks ago that I actually sat on miro for the first time, but almost a month later here are some photo of me actually riding him. This is the problem when you work alone, there is no one to document your progress.
Love this horse, so special. Had a great ride around the farm today, he was an angel, but most young horses I find are, when you give them the chance, wild horses however are calmer than most.

Saddled

Miro gets a saddle for the first time and goes exploring around the farm

My good old saddle

I wanted to share a story about a saddle with you, or just a story about why I love riding, and how a lot of my ideas and training methods came about. Because that, at the end of the day is why I have horses, because I enjoy it.



When I was a bit younger I think I was something like fourteen, maybe fifteen years old. My mum brought me a brand new saddle, the lady I was taking lessons from had said it was time, which in itself made me proud,I needed a proper jumping saddle, so mum, bless her, went out and got me one. Not just any saddle, a brand new jumping saddle, it was my pride and joy. A flat seat, close contact, and pristine tan leather.I was going to treasure it.




Now our winters, while not to cold, are wet, and where I live on clay soils, this means mud, and not just a little bit of it. Thick, deep,sticky, mud and if its not deep, it's slick and slippery. Just riding one horse usually mean the horse and you come back coated in the terrible stuff. It wreaks havoc on good quality horse gear.Any leather has to constantly be washed and dressed or otherwise end up, brittle, moldy, and scarred from the ingrained dirt and wet.



My brand new tan leather saddle, didnt need to be subjected to this kind of treatment.. Somewhere in that teenage brain, I'm sure was the thought, that cleaning gear was a chore, I just didn't have 'time' for. So in my mind at the time, my treasured saddle, if it was to stay new and beautiful, was only to be used for lesson, or competitions. Not for farm riding. Plus in those days, I just like to jump on my horse and ride, bareback, back to front it didn't matter.

To my mothers dismay, I stored my jumping saddle away, and most of the time, continued to hoon my ponies around bareback. (things havnt changed much, mum brought me lovely leather boots recently,she thought were for on the farm, but they are safely stowed away in my cupboard, while I clomp around in cheap rubber gumboots) I was lucky in the fact that my two best freinds were also horse riders, and my most of my teenage memories revolve around adventures with these two on horse back. Usally making homemade jumps, galloping around paddock and roadside, breaking in horses and doubling on our ponies,generally just seeing how far we could push the envelope wihtou coming to serious harm. Amoung the three us, there was definetly a good dose of competivness. When I wasn't with them, I continued to see what I could do, so that when we met up again I had some new tricks or show off.

Bareback was defintly my specialty, the months of doing everything saddleless,for fear that I would damage my new saddle meant I developed the ability to stick on my horse like glue. Every day after school I would ride my pony along a dirt track by our house, on which I had constructed various obstacles, like tree branches, barrels, and brushes to jump. Or other wise I just galloped up and down the hill, the steeper the better.

Even when we moved houses, and had more horses, I still only had one saddle, and I loved riding bareback anyway so I continued the tradition, winter = bareback riding. From my adventures with my freind where we had to sneakily get on unbroken horses without our parents finding out, I discovered that horses actually cope really well, with people just hoping on them without a saddle,and generally were much calmer about the whole process, so ever since I have always broken my horses in ,by first riding them bare back then introducing the saddle.

I've always liked riding without a saddle. But after finishing high school, and workings in barns riding properly for a few years, I was so focused on competing and training, the galloping around bareback slipped to the back of my mind. I thought I'd out grown it. Even though I still did break my own horses in bareback, I never really did more than than. I'd forgotten the daring feats of being a teenager and doing xcountry courses with no saddle, I'm grown up now right?

Well its a wet and muddy winter again, and my old saddle, is well worn, and obviously has earned some respect. In the last ten years, it carried me to wining a national series, countless wins and placing in eventing and showjumping, and has been squeezed on every size, shape and variety of horse. Most of the ribbons, rosettes, and rugs I have won have been collected in this saddle. It's had countless hours riding, and been used in the wet, mud, rain at competitions. It's got scratches, watermarks, stains, and in places the leather is worn almost paper thin. When it was new, it was cool, the latest style out, now ot looks almost old fasioned, with all the new saddle on the market.Yet it still does the job, the horrible joke, is that it still is my only jumping saddle, even though i ride a huge a variety of horses, compete at a high level, and this is my profession, I still havnt quite got around to buying a new saddle, it's on the list, one day..but other expenses keep cropping up. So it gets chucked on every horse I need to jump (I have a much bigger range of dressage saddles), and somehow with the help of various pad and blankets, i get it to fit well enough, to pop my horses over some fences. But the poor old saddle definetly has had a hard life despite all my efforts to keep it in pristine condition.

When my old freind came up for some horse riding, it was time to be teenagers again, and give the old saddle a day off. I remembered how much fun I used to have just jumping bareback and playing around on horse back. So here's the pics, riding the wild mare just like I used to ride my ponies back in the good old days. Having a blast out cross country schooling..it's funny though how it was a saddle that taught me to ride bareback.

Fifty shades of nay!

It's been fifty days since the wild horses were mustered. I wouldn't even realize it was day fifty except I saw someone else mention it on Facebook.

How the hell has fifty days gone by so fast? Yet it seems a century ago that the horses were stepping off the truck. I can't believe how much they have changed in such a short time. They are barely recognizable as the same horses. From timid,shy and bedraggled, to absolutely confident in there new life.

First of all the fact that some of them are already off succeeding in their new lives. I get updates from the owners all the time, and the wild boys are doing great. Both owners already want wild horses from the next muster!

My boy Miro, is waiting for me every morning at his gate, loves coming into his stable, and watches and greets from his stable every time in near. I can't complain to much about the mud, when I'm lucky enough to be greeted by this face every day!

Wild vs "wild"

I'm pretty even tempered, I know how to bite my tongue, nod, smile sweetly, and pretend to agree when I need to. I'm pretty good at seeing a lost cause on a conversation and moving on. Years of trying to explain how to train horses to people, who just don't want to listen has given me this ability. But some things, still manage to make my blood boil. I'm firmly of the belief that most problems with horses are people problems. I know that most people, don't have the time, inclination or resources to be great horse trainers, and that's fine because most people know that they're not amazing and still treat there horses nicely. I don't think everyone has to break in there own horses, or work with wild ones, know how to handle a stallion, or be a competitive rider to be good and enjoy there equine partners. I do think you have to have some empathy and humility though. So the one thing ( or rather one of the things) that drives me crazy, is when I hear from people, who go on, and on, and on, about how it's all the horse fault...

Things like, the horse is crazy, mean, planned how it was going to get its rider off. Horses definetly don't plan things, they only ever react to what's going on around them at that exact moment. better yet it's always the previous owner, trainer, or some event in the animals past that made it the way it is. Never the current owner/ riders fault, to be fair this can happen, but often it's people who have the horse now that are at fault. But the excuse I keep hearing again and again, over the last few years is "oh it came from the wild"

This has nothing to do with anything! My horses that have come from muster, are well behaved, lovely horses, and most of them are stallions, as a breed they are some of the most sensible, calm, and easy to train horses I've ever worked with. But the fact that it could have been "wild" at one point is a fantastic excuse for some people. The thing is, that not a single horse "that probably came from the wild" that I have had to work with, actually has been from the wild, they are always just ordinary horses, sometimes with unknown breeding or history and people just use the "wild" thing as an excuse.

This is sad in two ways. Firstly it gives the real wild horses, that are generally really sweet and easy to work with, an undeserved bad reputation. Secondly it just another excuse, to not improve ones own skills, by blaming it on the horse.

Horses are prey animals, it alway pays to remember this, they think and react differently from your domestic dog. Yet people wonder why when they chase their supposedly wild horse, around a paddock on a motor bike trying to catch it, it start bolting through fences. Or when they decide to throw a saddle on one day to break it in, it bucks like crazy until saddle comes off, because it's never been worked before, it therefore must be a wild one. Urghh! I swear I've heard every dumb idea form a person, blamed on wild horses. All this behavior is because the horse is terrified not because it was once wild.

To cut along story short, I brought a couple of ponies last year for really cheap, because they were in a sorry state, they we're all unbroken supposedly, and one they thought must be " one of those wild ones that they muster up every year" because she was really nasty. He also went on to say he thought all the kaimanawa horses were a waste, and should be entirely eradicated, because they were probably all like this one.I knew this little mare wasn't from the wild, because she looked exactly like a typical little welsh pony that had learned a few tricks, and nothing like a Kaimanawa that I'd ever seen. I also knew I shouldn't buy her, because any horse that has been half broken in, and had problems, is always the hardest to fix and usally always is a little bit unreliable, for a long time afterwords. But I felt bad for the pony, she was intelligent and pretty so she came home with me.

Little Bramble, as she was named for her prickly personality, was a nightmare, and just as much trouble as I thought she was going to be. Hard to catch, rude, very quick to react and very smart.I actually ended up having a hospital visit, due to a kick from her. You could tell immdeintly that this horse had learned from some bad experiences. She would see you coming with a saddle, and just explode into bucks, before the saddle even touched her back, proof she knew what it was, she wasn't happy about it and knew how to solve the problem. Once the saddle was on, she would either come at you bucking, or try to pull free. The only thing in her favor is that no one had ever tried to ride her, so she had no problems with someone actually sitting on her, having no learned bad experiences past the point of having a saddle on her back. Today I can happily say, she's a lovely 4yr old pony, that loves to be worked and waits at the gate for you, she is still a little spitfire in personality, but now channels her energy into trying to please rather than escape.

Poor little Bramble, it took a year to undo what probably took a idiot with a rope,no time at all to create. This is why real wild horses are so much easier to train, than so called "wild" horses, there is no retraining involved.

So when her idiot, old owner rang to enquire how the ponies he sold were doing, and explain in a voice as if he'd was talking to a child, that he had come across another horse that was "obviously another Kaimanawa " because he'd tried to break it in and it acted the same way. To him more proof, in his mind, all horses tht couldn't cope with his training were wild. He repeated, that only bad horses got let loose in the ranges, and should all be shot. Oh and would I be interested in buying this one too? since I obviously knew a thing or to about wild horses.... That was final straw,I slammed the phone down, hanging up on him mid sentence,
he was just one excuse, and one idiot to many for me to cope with today. I stomped outside blood boiling, and went and played with my stallion, totally docile and charming, who unlike this moron's horse actually was running wild in the mountains six weeks ago....

Fiji baby

I hate this time of year. It's awful, there's no point pretending otherwise. Mud and rain, constantly makes my life miserable, I know I've said this before, but it's my life at the moment. Working with horsess this time of year is, less horse training time, and more mucking out stables, feeding out hay in the pastures, and just wading through deep mud constantly. It's hard to get any horse training in, to wet to ride on the paddocks, and with twice the hrose care work load, I find this time of year depressing, you feel exhausted every day and no great achievements to show for it, the is the weather for just surviving through it. But there is hope on the horizon.

Most readers will know I went to Egypt a few months ago, to do volunteer work over there, mostly with horses, but camels, donkeys and a few small animals featured as well. It's happening again, in six weeks I'm off, this time to Fiji, and the tropics are sounding really good right now, let me tell you! It will be focusing on caring for animals, as well as trying to educate locals in better animal care practices.

I can't wait, I love this kind of work. Just getting to work with a team of people rather than by myself is nice, but combine that with exotic places, animals and a feeling of making a differance and your on to a wining formula. While it was long exhausting days, and at times heartbreaking in Egypt, and I'm sure it will be the same in Fiji, it absolutely what I love.I don't mind the work, you feel like your achieving something, and
making a difference . I'll be traveling with the same people and organisation again Kiwi Care Team, http://www.facebook.com/KiwiCareTeam I can't wait, I loved working with other knowledgable horse people who specialize in differant fields from me. I learned so much last time and am looking forward to doing the same again.

So while tomorrow might be another day of hard slog,and a sense of un-accomplishment at least it will be one day closer to tropical holidays.. I can't wait.Here's a few pics of the Egypt trip, hopefully for the animals sake things aren't quite as bad in Fiji....