I might have mentioned in a previous post that every summer, I take Rose (or Jane, or whatever horse I have at the moment) to Comox for the first two weeks of summer. This is where my friend Jasmine lives with her two horses. She has a little hobby farm there.
It was so great to have Rose right there in the backyard so that I could visit her whenever I wanted. Because of this, I learned Rose is very vocal. Whinnies to the other horses all the time, nickers when I bring her dinner, snorts and squeals at Levi (her main man, although the feeling isn't mutual haha - more on that later). She's got a lot of personality and I wouldn't have known the full extent if I hadn't actually lived with her for two weeks. Our days would go something like this:
6am - I wake up, go down to barn in PJ's and bare feet, muck out the paddocks, and feed the horses and the cat.
8am - breakfast, then go back down to the bunkhouse (where Jasmine and I were sleeping) and get changed, visit the ponies again.
9am - go out to town on some kind of adventure, or go for a ride
12pm - lunch, another visit with the ponies to turn them out into the big field or give them some more hay for lunch.
1pm - some kind of activity at home (sometimes that meant visiting the ponies again)
6pm - dinner
7pm - if we hadn't ridden earlier in the day, we'd go for a nice evening ride when the weather wasn't as hot
8pm - feed horses dinner
So as you can see, I was visiting Rose around six times in a day! This definitely wouldn't be possible if Rose didn't live with me. This is one of the downsides to keeping your horse at a boarding barn.
Being in a situation like this means the horse gets a much more positive image of their person because the person isn't just coming to ride them, the person also means meals, turnout, and fun. This is what Rose thought of me by the end of our visit.
We took the horses many places. The trails were a lot different in Comox - lots of hills, rocks, and trees - versus Sea Island - flat land, tall grass, no trees.
There was one downside to the visit though. Levi, Jasmine's big appaloosa, really didn't like Rose. This was because he felt he had to protect Jasmine's other horse, Goldie. Rose couldn't read Levi's signals telling her to bug off, so she got quite a few bites on her rump. But this didn't deter her from trying to make Levi like her! We put them together twice and both times didn't go so well. Here's Levi chasing Rose in the big field:
Now onto the three day eventing clinic at Avalon Equestrian Centre in Duncan, BC!
Well this was a blast! So much learned, Rose and I were both mindblown at the end of this. Five lessons in three days makes for some tired girls! But we had so much fun and took many things away from the weekend to continue practicing at home. I won't write too much as pictures speak a thousand words, so here goes!