Yeah, yeah we had the snow too!  Unlike some of you we actually had polar bears 'dans le coin' .
 To think some of you poor buggars still have snow now! Our snow only stopped us riding for four days (touch wood, there could well be more on the way) but while it was here I thought I should do something useful, so it seemed a cunning plan to break Peggy in, even if she is only two. There are some ponies in Peggy's background, we won't mention names, who weren't that cute to break so it seemed a...
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Monty's been nagging, nagging and nagging at me, he wants to go and see the christmas lights at Montjoie up the road.
So I threw in a little new year's eve surprise for him and took him up in the trailer to see in the new year!



One minute we were there, then the next we're here;



Welcome 2013!

We had to take Popeye too;



'Cos he'd heard from Visa and Cloud on their coach tour last week that the lights were seriously cool;



So as you can see, all three of us and the camera man had a truly wicked time;



e...
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Before the year is done( and the clock's ticking now) I wanted to catch up with a few of our fearsome and fairsome adventures from this particularly pretty Autumn.
Boy, that seems a long time ago now after weeks of greyness, mist, cloud and rain. How can you have Christmas in a soggy mizzle? It's depressing enough anyhow, at least with a sunny day of crispy snow it feels right!

So anyhow this Autumn we got up to a few tricks outside of the usual pony stuff like breaking Visa;



with spotty dogs, t...
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we survived the apocalypse! And everyone partook of a little jubilation!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9FTcsOycCk

Even Turnip wanted to do dancing, but since he does dancing nearly every time he goes out for a ride he had to   ' make do' with dressing up in the tutu;



It was rather optimistic of the Mayans to predict an armageddon so far into their future I feel, since to the best of my knowledge the Mayan civilization died out rather a long time ago.
Anyhow I'm pleased along with you all that ...
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So bye bye Blighty........



I'm back in France,back in business, with all the cobs and their jobs..........



(lots of cheesy feet to trim!!).

 We're also finally back with an internet connection courtesy of a flash new satellite dish and very expensive new satellite broadband connection. It's been ever such a long break from the blog spot,but I feel I should catch up my news even if it hasn't been such a good year it's definitely been far more successful than the year before, even if the weather w...
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Okay guys you've not come forward with many pig homing offers, so we've  had to take another route as we really don't have a pig pen suitable for raising nine pigs.

Firstly we ran the pigs past the tray looking for suitably sized candidates;



Then we picked a pig;



Double take, is this the right pig?



Then we stunned the pig, eewwh!



Killed the pig;

(NOT PICTURED.)

Prepared the pig for cooking;


And cooked the pig;



Yummy Yummy!

Not really, not yet, but we are considering this as a course of action as it doe...
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I had planned to boast to you of the wonderful weekend I had jumping Turnip and Red at Brecey. However as I frequently find it's best not to make predictions of success.

Last Monday Red and Turnip visited Gavray and jumped very well, I arrived home glowing not just because of their perfomances but because Mr Gavray had invited me to use his holiday gite and stabling in exchange for working some hours once I have relocated back to England.
By Wednesday morning I  had truly lost that glow as I c...
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Okay so now I'm going to do a little bit of the catching up as promised..........
Firstly Le Haras du Pin, after several hundred phonecalls the dogsbody finally managed to discover that every tuesday  throughout February and March a young horse clear round showjumping day is held, from 4yo's in the morning to 6yo's in the afternoon. But noone checks the age or passport of your horse, so it basically means the jumps go from smaller to bigger. They informed us on entering that  the height of the...
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Last week was busy in terms of very big decisions but I didn't do particularly much apart from deciding said decisions. I will come to talk about all this deciding but not now, that can wait for next week.
If I don't get on with a posting shortly I'll be in to next week anyhow and I'm really trying my hardest to be good and keep on top of news for you and memories for me.
Yes we have pigs- lot of pigs, we went from two pigs to ten pigs in just a couple of hours.It all began on friday morning wi...

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It may be necessary for you to refer to last week's post to really get this photo and realise I haven't lost my marbles just yet. You may recall on my first day of breaking Monty I introduced him to being ridden by a bear, it just happened the bear was to hand. I have a decent selection of large fluffy toys used for breaking and jumping and lots else besides. Most purchased for a pound a piece, well a euro actually at the local junk shop.
Since Monty was accustomed to bears it only seemed ...

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About a week, ten days ago I was busy minding my own business mucking out the stables in the dark, about nine at night.(The horses are all living out at night in an effort to maintain all round sanity, sense for them, less work for me). Suddenly there was an almighty crash that made the very rafters shiver and had me running for the door, scanning the skies for evidence of the burning inferno from the bomb just dropped. But no, nothing to be seen.

We are informed by those that know, if inde...

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So we got to ride at Le Lion after all..................

Okay, okay so it's not in quite in the capacity we all dream of but I can still say in all honesty that I got to ride at Le Lion d'Angers with a young horse.

It all came about by chance, I had been trawling the internet to find evidence of some “entrainement” show jumping classes at the Haras du Pin which someone told me about over a year ago. Entrainement in France means' a training class' for a young horse or rider wanting...

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So I’m going to forget all that Happy New Year nonsense I began with last year, because it didn’t really get me anywhere at all. I had all these hopes, dreams and aspirations that didn’t even get to flutter on my horizon let alone get anywhere close to  being fulfilled. I shall try the new theatrical approach as practiced by Mini in the photo above. No Mini hadn’t broken her leg just removed a dew claw swiftly and painfully in the seat of the truck whilst making a speedy exit afte...

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Last weekend we were lucky enough to leave these guys at home doing this:

So we could go here:

with these:

and it was all because of this;

Yep sorry everyone for the rather ghastly picture of my purple thunder thigh, but I feel I ought to share some of my pain.
Infact my leg although painful was not a patch on my shoulder; so all horse activity last week (of the riding kind) was knocked on the head and the horses were all turned out as I couldn't even muck out.Thankfully the weather has been,`oh s...
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I know it's a little late, but this is just to thank you Marie for coming to the beach with Neddy, Rog and me.
AND also thank you for bringing along tea and yummy cake and biscuits it was a welcome surprise!
Sometime towards the end of last week Marie agreed to come down to the beach with us braving a chilly March evening to give Neddy a feel of speed in deep sand. It was Neddy's first visit to the beach so I rode him a little bit to start giving him a canter round the sand gallop in the dunes....
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At least some of us round here are enjoying the snow, most of us have well and truly had enough and want to get on with it. Thankfully we did get a passage from the snow plough so today I bravely wrapped up Rog and Ned and took them for a totter round the lanes. On the whole the roads were free of ice and slush which was lucky as Neddy was leaping about like  a spring lamb after his few days of unplanned holiday.
We've had a rather up and down week. I've lost my favourite schooling spot at Vi...

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So I've got the ball rolling......
 It's a little tedious in France at the beginning of every year.
 Once you get going with your competition licence and get you foreign horses on the books it all rolls along very simply. Much more easily than in England really as all entries are done on the internet from a competing account that is held with the FFE or someone affiliated to them. Anyhow all your entry fees are taken from it and all winnings paid to it. Entries only close a week before too whic...
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It's very pretty but will it go?
 We were all raring to go, started giving everyone a trim and a polish.
 Surfed the FFE Compet site to see where were first headed,started to bother about all the various tasks involved in getting the youngsters ready to compete here, signalements and registrations, all that jazz.
 Started practicing my squat thrusts to get my competition medical, competition licence etc.
 Then the snow returns, what's more; it's still here and we're back at the grindstone just p...
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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED ;THE DOGSBODY WATER PUMP.
Shows fantastic performance despite the ongoing cold snap, no sign of freezing up yet!
(snowboarding injuries could threaten to slow output though)

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Hey powder hound, posted these dust dogs catching some gnarly air just for you!
Is London this happenin?

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Alright for some, some might say. Today of all days, as the global summit on climate change in Copenhagen has passed its deadline for agreement with suprise suprise, no agreement, we're suffering the concequences (some might say) of climate change. Fancy that, it's the winter and we've got snow!
In our efforts to be ecologically aware we thought maybe it would be sound to go and check out if out current spot of "freak weather" was up to scratch and proper winter snow or just the globaly warme...
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