Combined driving, we love it.

Combined driving.  Often when you talk about the sport that you absolutely love, nobody knows what you are talking about.  We spent this last weekend in 70 Mile House, B.C. with 35 other competitors having a wonderful time, driving our horses and feeling the adrenaline rush.  That's combined driving, a real adrenaline rush.  Whether you drive a mini (vse), a mule, a donkey, a horse, or two or three or four, it is all a great rush just to do it.  
Combined driving also known as Horse Driving Trials is an equestrian sport involving carriage driving. In this discipline the driver sits on a vehicle drawn by a single horse, a pair or a team of four. The sport has three phases: Dressage, Cross-country Marathon and Obstacle Cone Driving and is most similar to the mounted equestrian sport of eventing. It is one of the ten international equestrian sport horse disciplines recognized by the Fédération Equestre Internationale (FEI). Driving became an FEI discipline in 1970.^[1]

We had a great time, and thought that we would share some of our pictures.  How we travel.  It takes two rigs to get us to our destination "in style".  This is our great old International that just gets better and better every trip.  Took awhile to blow the carbon out of it after we got it because it is an old Telus truck and had just idled alot down at the coast in its first life.  In order to put the carriages up there, we had to reinforce the box a little.  Don't do this at home ;-}.

Here are Ted and June after 10K of the marathon.  Fred on the lines and Bill as navigator.

Oh nnnnooooooo,  boss, last year these coyotes ate us, not again!!!!!!.   

Ted, protect me.  What do you mean, June, there's another one over here ttttttttooooooo!!!!!!

We're out of here!!!! What do you know, they completed the first obstacle successfully.  Yayyyyy.

OMG, we didn't have to do this one last year.   Atleast there aren't any moose here.

Round and round we go.

And again.

Let's get Bill's feet wet - to his knees!!!!

We'll take some of the water with us, so the mini's will atleast not drown, maybe.

Scary Huberville.   They look calm, but this hazard scared them more than any other.

Noooooooooo, that away!!!!!!!   The curse of navigators.  Drivers need eyes in the back of their heads.

A little tight, eh what.

Boring, didn't roll the dice this year.

Some of our friends.  Look closely, this is a four up.  Not much bigger than the coyotes.

This is why we tried to take some water out of the hazard.  The cut out is of Ray Cody, kicking water - long story from last year.

A unicorn hitch of even smaller vse's.

Charlie and the invincible fleas.

The team after 15 kilometers.


Thought you might enjoy the pictures.  Can you tell how much fun this is.  A real adrenaline rush, but at our level quite safe with lots of help from other competitors and officials.  Sorry no pictures yet of the dressage and cones day.  Will try to upload those later.

Spring is here

April 25th, Easter Monday

Spring is finally here, two days with weather above 10 C, the mud drying up and the horses in the barn getting their winter hair scraped off.  The stalls are clean, the pens are drying out, and almost time to scrape the winter accumulation of mud and manure out of them as well.

It has been quite a month.  We picked up our new Pacific Carriage, an Omega, two weeks ago, and we have been getting ready to hitch the horses up to it.  Unfortunately, it is so nice that I don't really want to use it - afraid it will get scratched, or some other horrendous thing will happen to it, but I must bite the bullet, hitch up and drive off with it.  Interestingly, Garret, who is two, loves to sit in it.  I am not sure that he knows that it is supposed to be hooked to horses, but for now he loves to sit in it and climb down using the proper steps.  He is quite proud of the fact he can get down using the steps.

We also picked up a lovely standardbred mare who is Artist's size and could be a mate for him in a pair.  Not sure he wants to be a pair, but time will tell.  She has made herself right at home, acting like the princess she is.  She is old for a racing standardbred, 13, but she is clean legged, sound and what a trot.  Too bad they have to pace on the track, she is definitely a fine harness trotter, which is fine with us. 

Winter, part two

The weather is starting to warm up here, so spring is not too far away. The horses are actually starting to shed. Gave them their spring lice treatment this week, and took the heavy blankets of the geriatrics.

Funny story. Somehow Buckley scraped the side of his left hock, so he had to come into the barn for treatment and some tenderloving care. He stayed in the barn for a few days. Buckley is in a field with five other standardbreds, two percheron geldings and Max, a paint gelding. The boss of the herd is Geraint Hannover (Gerry), a noble standardbred who won almost $100,000 on the track and knows it. He came to me from a wonderful trainer  who also had Pacing Artist. On day two of Buckley's tlc care, I went out to the barn in the morning and Gerry is standing at the gate by the waterer, and picking up his left hind foot and putting it back down. Every time I look at him he picks up his left hind foot. I went into the barn to get started with chorse (A sisters creek spelling), and when I came out to feed the other horses, there he is picking up the foot and putting it down. He actually got himself up against the fence and hopped a little on that leg, moving back towards the gate. All the time he is looking at me. Well, I thought I had better check that out, since I pride myself on how observant I am with the horses. Keep in mind that I hadn't taken Buckley out of the big pen and put him in the barn, and I usually don't do chorse when it is really cold because of my asthma, but he has me categorized as the carrot lady.

I went and got the halter, took it up towards the gate, Gerry is standing right at the gate, not letting anyone else close, and held up the halter for him. He threw his head into the halter, quietly came out of the gate, turned and waited for me - remember we have a foot of snow around, and in some places its quite rough; and off we marched to the barn.

In he went as happy as could be into a box stall with lots of hay and a serving of grain, and he was happy. Not a sign of a limp, no heat, nothing. He just figured out what he needed to do in order to get into that barn for some tlc. Never once called to the other pasture buddies. So he now is on a cycle of in the small pen, and back to his stall. This morning when I took him to the small pen, he looked out at the pasture as though to say "See what I've got". I am half expecting another standardbred to be at the gate in the pasture pen with a gimpy leg tomorrow morning, maybe Nron, or Zilch. They are very, very smart horses. Keep in mind that he used the same leg as Buckley had scraped, and looked directly at me as he raised his foot. Who's the boss here. You tell me.

Winter, winter, winter

Yes winter is still with us. Last week was the dogsled mail run. I thought it would be interesting for people to see some of this activity and also the snow!!!!!!!!!

One day a year, the dog sleds race from Quesnel to Barkerville, carrying Canada Post special envelopes. This year the weather was beautiful, and there was lots of snow, as you can see. It is quite the spectacle.

We, on the other hand, have been shovelling snow for two weeks now. Before Christmas there was very little snow, and all of a sudden in January, boom, the snow started to fall, over two feet of it. It is beautiful, but the roofs can't handle it sometimes, and as the news has said, there have been a number of roof failures. Most of the failures were on the east coast, because here houses are built to high standards of roof strength, but we still had some concerns, especially if it begins to rain (which it did last week) on top of the snow, so we took the snow off the house roof and the barn additions. Then in the warm weather, swoooooosssssshhhhhh, the snow flew off the metal barn roofs. Quite the noice, the horses were jumping around like crazy when that happened.