More on Bill

I bred Bill out of a TB mare I had at the time. The TB mare had raced with the name Simply Brilliant and then went showjumping with the name Bobbit because her tail had been chewed. Naturally, I competed her under her racename because Bobbit is a horrendous name for a very nice horse, But the name Bob stuck and she suited it. She was an amazing mare. Hot and sensitive, hated flatwork and loved to jump. She was a super mover and a real head turner. I jumped her to 1.30m, won showhunter classes up to 1.15m, and evented to Novice (Equivalent of Prelim in US). She could go straight from a speed class to a hunter class and as soon as you took her flash off, she knew and went differently. Bob is by the supersire in the Southern Hemisphere of top jumping and eventing horses Brilliant Invader.


Bob

I probably didn't pick the best stallion for her. In hindsight I would probably have used Senator VDL who has similar breeding but with Col De La Bryere blood. Still the stallion we went for was cheaper, closer and has produced top jumpers, hunters and eventers. So Bob went to Voltaire II. I wish I knew about him then what I know now, specifically the crooked leg he throws. Voltaire tends to stamp his offspring, they tend to be compact animals with long legs that are tall, often bay, with plenty of chrome.


Voltaire II


It would seem though, that Bobs genes are stronger than Voltaires, as Bill is a lot like her mother. Her face is the spitting image of Bobs, and when sent a picture of one of Bobs earlier foals, the similarities in all of their heads was incredible. Bill is not like most of the other Voltaires I have seen. She would be lucky to be 16hh, she is extremely compact and short legged, short necked and her neck attaches low into her shoulder. She is still very downhill and is developing very slowly. Still she seems to have her mothers stunning flat movement and brave temperament, as well as her stubbornness of course.



Anyway, Voltaire has produced some GP jumpers, as has Bob's sire, and Bill breeds back to Precipitation on both sides of her pedigree and he is said to be the original sire of jumping horses. Her pedigree says she will jump so who knows, maybe she will hate it, but I think she wont. I worry she is more of a hunter type or an eventing type, but time will tell. She has shown some form free jumping. I don't know. I guess on paper she is my big hope for the future. But who knows for now I'm enjoying training another horse, because it's so rewarding. It's interesting with Connie when I broke her in she had so holes in her training because she was so easy and I'm still filling some of them in. Bill on the other hand is a lot more solidly trained because I can't get away with holes with her. It's little steps.



In other news, I have finally found a saddle for Connie horse- she has a County Innovation coming, Kate's Prestige is coming very soon and my bank account is looking very sad!

Bill

Bill pony is going well. Has had a canter under saddle and has been out on two farm rides. She is very shortnecked - there isn't a lot of horse in front of you. She has been very good though, maybe it wasn't so bad that it's taken me this long to get her going

Feel the fear and do it anyway

Connie over a spar at the first hunt of the season. It's not a great picture but hey we are getting over!

I have always thought hunting was for the slightly mad. All this jumping fences malarky, along with all that galloping around and drinking from hip flasks. I'm not wrong, but with both my good friend and my sister and mother telling me I should hunt to get brave, I thought I would give it a try. I have previously done two hunts. One when I was small with my Mum on a 12.2hh pony. I really wasn't ready what I mostly remember was Mum yelling at me for getting off my horse because I didn't want to ride up the steep hill. Poor Mum! She says we had some good gallops and stuff so thats good.

Then a couple of years ago I went out on my sisters pony Prue for the opening hunt while she rode the Bob. I didn't want to jump anything on the mad pony but we did have some awesome gallops. Kim hunted a few more times that season until Bob collapsed and died and that was pretty much it for hunting. Anyway, the opening hunt was last Saturday and Connie being quite a sane type and Kate having hunted a lot previously apparently, Kim and I packed up and went. Connie was quite good, we found a nice little spar to start over and she was cool with that. Often horses struggle wit the concept of jumping through the fence line but Connie was pretty much indifferent. Jumped it big though to be fair. Had some really good gallops on this hunt and some nice runs where Kim and I cantered along jumping spars. The hunt was over when the hare ran into a culvert.

I honestly thought Connie would either blow her stack or be totally not interested in hunting. Like the rest of the hunt would be galloping over the skyline and Connie would be left behind wandering up the hill reluctantly, dragging her little hooves. But no, she seemed to really enjoy it and was full of running, and is actually much fitter than I thought. The next day having ridden for 3 hours I was a wreck.

Then on Easter Monday there was another hunt that I went to that was out on the coast and I took the Kate. The hounds scented a hare in the very first paddock and we were off on a short run. I just tucked Kate in behind my friends horse and away she went. She is great on the gallops in that she just arches her neck and sits lightly on the contact and just gallops along without fighting. She jumped well early on and then the hunt got slow and we wandered around for a while trying to find a hare.

I seriously underestimated one spar. It looked nice an solid, but it was jumping into a laneway, with a level change and we were going in cold as we were just wandering behind the hunt. So anyway, Kate stopped and she sat down and we sat for a while and then she rolled over and I stepped off. Then I got back on and followed my friend over the spar and off we went again. See hunting is for the mad. Anyway, I jumped so many spars that day tat terrified me. Little frail ones, ones with holes in front and narrow narrow ones. Even one with wire along the top of it about 2 inches up. One spar I didn't want to jump but the gate had an electric wire behind it and apparently I find a death spar less scary than getting a small electric shock so there you are. Had one amazing run over like 5 spars so that was good practice and by the end of that I was getting the hang of hunting her, and not fighting her too much. Still by this time both Kate and my friends horse were absolutely poked and getting a bit naughty because they were so tired. Well her horse was doing half rears and Kate pawed a little but Kate is a cool customer.

One the way in I got offered- incredibly kindly- a very reliable hunter if my mum wanted to hunt on Wednesday. So I convinced Mum to do that and she was quite excited. She hadn't hunted properly (jumping fences) since she was 17 and has not ridden a lot recently.And I went to my third hunt in 5 days. Connie knew the drill this time and she was one excited pony she was insanely strong on the first run, so I didn't jump the first spar but Mum sure did. She reckons she was cantering in wondering if she remembered how to jump but she looked so tidy over the fences, obviously she retained it. The next spar was very small and I popped Connie over it and she was good and so then we got stuck in a bit more. Had one really awesome run where I jumped a lowered wire even. First lowered wire I have ever jumped. (lowered wires don't have the rail across the top) Near the end of the hunt Connie started doing little rears and got quite worked up waiting to jump one spar so she was odiously pretty tired and we went in soon after. Not much was happening and the hunt came in like 10 minutes later.

So every hunt I have definitely done things that have scared me which is really good and should help me get braver. After jumping wire, a showjump should be easy right? Connie is absolutely loving it too, she is quite the speed freak. It didn't help on the last hunt that she was ridiculously in season and she is always a bit more mad when she is in season. She fell in love with a gelding and kept molesting him, but completely ignored the pony stallion, so go figure. Mostly, I love the galloping the best, it's such a liberating feeling.

I'm not dead- just busy

Guess what I have been doing!



You know the neck in the background haha!






With Mum