Manky Monkey Motors

Spent an interesting couple of hours down at Taz's livery yard this afternoon, watching some of the girls training their ponies.
If you haven't met her, Taz manages the stables at Clandon Park, here in Surrey. People pay to keep their horses here & have the use of the facilities, including the schooling arena. The all weather ground covering is made from recycled car tyres, laid on sand by the way.
Most of the owners enter their horses in weekend competitions, which often include jumps & obstacles. Here, Lily is training Cherokee to walk across a bridge -looks simple, but it's not a natural thing for a horse to do -they're very nervous animals & wary of anything new. So getting him to walk across the improvised platform, especially as it moves as he puts his weight on it, takes lots of encouragement, (using a bag of treats), & repetition. Eventually, he gets the idea. You can see here that he trusts Lily not to put him in any danger & is watching her, not the bridge.

She's trained him to respond to various signals so he'll stop, turn & even walk backwards with just hand gestures from her.
Here he's actually reversing back off the platform.

Once he knows what's being asked of him, Lily removes the guide rope & he happily crosses back & forth over the bridge following her signals.

The next stage is to add rails either side of the "bridge". Again, horses are naturally very wary of confined spaces & many would refuse to do this.

"Whisper" tries the scary wobbly bridge, led by Vicki. Scattering some of the rubber granules on it helps to make it less intimidating.
First the wooden platform.

Then with the poles laid on the ground either side.

And eventually with both rails in place. Success.

Cherokee again, getting airborne.

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Watched with interest by newcomer Johno. This guy is absolutely enormous -17.2 hands high.
Up to 14.2 hands tall is a pony. Above that, they're a horse. I think this one's a giraffe.
One hand equals 4 inches which makes him 70" tall, or nearly 6 feet, measured from the ground to the top of the withers, (the top of the shoulder).

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Do these guys get daily visits from their respective owners or are they abondoned all week n play things at the weekend?

I never realised that horses were delivered on pallets!!!amazing, what do you strap them down wiv........ nurse, nurse...

They arrive in boxes -horse boxes.
TB, half of the horses are on DIY livery & half on part livery. The DIY ones are looked after entirely by their owners, so they see them twice a day. The part liveries are cared for by the staff, but most owners still come to groom & exercise their animals as often as they can.
Horses ain't cheap -Taz will no doubt correct me, but stable fees are something like 100 quid a week, plus equipment, new shoes every 6 weeks, vet's fees, food supplements etc. So a lot of people share, which means the horses have plenty of company. They're herd animals & fret if they're left alone, so always have a field buddy when they're turned out to graze.

More happy memories of my mispent youth.
Being bored playing on my own down on Ham Common ( yeah I know - poor old billy no-mates!), I popped into the stables based down there - asked for a part time job as a stable lad and got it.
Best move I ever did - got to look after Jimmy Edward's polo pony ( Star ) and take it out for exercises, the only time Jimmy saw his horse was when we took it to the polo pitch as far as I can recall - i certainly never saw him at the weekends when i was working. Got taught to ride on a very wilful shetland ( memory tells me I spent more time on the floor than on the pony! ) and from then on could take the ponies out to whichever Polo pitch they were using - got to meet members of the Royal family radio stars and got bitten on the shoulder by one of the royal horses!
Now just what other memories are you going to drag out of the recesses of my mind!

Oddly enough I find myself more interested in Lily than the horses ::)Spent way too much time with them living on a ranch in the Camargue when I was young.

Careful Paul -she's just joined the forum.  :)

Thats okay I'm way too old anyway :'( Might have been in with a chance 40 years ago mind ::),,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Maybe not!
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u284/afghanman_photos/meandbusefal.jpg)

Love the horse!   ;D

Yes he was a lovely gentle Camargue stallion, named Bucephalus after Alexander the greats horse.

lol love the flairs  ;D

"You are too kind" :D I'll have you know they were very fashionable in 1969 ;D just ask your old man :D

I was 7 years old in 1969.
And Taz was, erm, minus 6.

Whippersnappers :D

Who ser What ers?

Flares - yep, I wore them.........  and cheesecloth shirts.....   and beads, man.........

Yeah I know! Phwoooooaaaar! lol

You like horses Archie?

I like to wave to the horsey lady behind the workshop on a regular basis ;D

Well I never ...I didn't know that horses were that timid. I thought that they were hard as nails and only scared of big noisey things like cars motor bikes etc. So, as I can walk over bridges and things and didn't have to be trained does that make me braver than a bloody great horse, or more stoopid?
One of the girls at school in year 8 (2nd year for us oldies) rides a 17.4 in shows and things, mind you she is a big maid.

Horses are incredibly stupid having very small brains for their size, as a result they are frightened of nearly everything.
Ponies, on the other hand, which are actually a different kind of animal, are very intelligent (often more so than their owners, which can be interesting!)

My sister has verious ponies at her place in Wales and most of them aren't scared of anything!

  takes lots of encouragement, (using a bag of treats), & repetition. Eventually, he gets the idea. [/quote]


story of my life I think  ;D ;D ;D ;D

Wot she said and wot he said. Lots of treats  ;D


ps - K there is no such thing as a horse standing at 17.4 hh, (hands high), tall. It would either be 17.3 or 18hh. Either way that's a big bugger  ;D
pps - K thanks for translating school years I havent a clue how the new ones work  :-\

Thanks for that Tazet. I don't know how these horsey thing work, maybe she said 17.3. Is it that a hand was (is) 4 fingers (4 inches?) so .1, .2, .3, refers to fingers? As i said I'm not at all sure about horsey things. I have 'ridden' in the past and had some lovely afternoons on dartmoor. I would like to learn to ride properly but its really expensive down here, or was the last time I checked. She's quite a chunky maid and tall too so I reckon she's quite heavy, not the sort of girl you'd put on a small horse. I'm not being unkind but I wouldn't put her on anything smaller than a rhino myself.
Regards
K

Hiya, Taz's own horse, "Suzie", (on long term loan from her employers), stands 17.1 3/4 tall. Maybe that's a couple of broken fingers?

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Oooooh ain't she pretty.

Horses are very nice except when the bite and sctatch wiv their little feet!! See I know loads about 'orses really.

I love watching them opening and drying their wings when they first come out of the chrysalis.................... see I know loads about horses too. ;D ;D ;D ;D

Hey cabman if you could get some pics of them hatching it would be brill as I've never seen that stage, video would be better. I've tried youtube (the web site, I'm not calling you a tube) but to no avail I think my education is missing something.
Regards
K

Jeez, what a bunch of tubes you lot are.

Blimey, you lot are dense!! Everyone knows that baby horses ( or chicks as they are known properly) are squeezed out of the females blowholes! They can lay over one thousand babies at a time, but only two or three survive as their natural predator, the ladybird, consumes vast amounts at a single sitting!!!!

Thank you for that clive you sexist, I'm going to set the PC brigade on you did you not know that there are no such things as ladybirds anymore they are now known as size challenged birds of no specific gender. I'm on to the PC brigade NOW. The people at Dell will not be amused!! ;D

PMSL at this thread! ;D

Oh god help us all. And to think people join this site to get advice  :o I just pray they don't read this first  ::)

Just horsing around..................

 ;D

neigh,,,,,, horsing around i wouldn,t believe it never  ;)

I think anyone that joins this site should read this first to show what trike and custom car building can do to their brain. If they join after seeing this they're halfway there ;D ;D
Regards
K