If you’ve read my most recent post, you’ll already know about my new pony! Jimmy has been with me for nearly two months now, having arrived at the end of January, so it’s high time that I filled you in on the details…
Jimmy is a 13 year old 14 hh chestnut Welsh Section D gelding. He is my aunt’s horse who I have taken on as a bit of a project and there’s a lot of potential to work on with him. Jimmy has lived on my aunt’s farm with her two other ponies for the past seven years, so I wasn’t quite sure how he was going to take to his big move all the way from Kent to Norfolk by himself. I needn’t have worried, however, as he has been amazing from the start. He travelled perfectly and settled into life in his new home really quickly.
So far I’ve been taking things slowly with Jimmy and just working on building our relationship and his trust and confidence in me, with some easy hacking routes. One of the biggest issues we are working on at the moment is Jimmy’s instinct to back up off the leg when he is worried about something. We have been working on this quite a bit (due to a “very scary” bridge we have to cross on our usual hacking routes) and I feel like we are making good progress.
I have high hopes for all sorts of fun with Jimmy in the future but I’m in no rush – for the time being I am just focusing on his confidence and fitness. The clocks are changing this weekend so after that there should be enough daylight to ride after work, which will be great. As I mentioned in my previous post, we don’t have a school at my new yard but I’m hoping that soon we’ll be able to trailer Jimmy up to the school at my work, when lockdown restrictions allow it. It will be good to do some work with him in the school as I’ve tried doing a few schooling hacks, but I’m not sure that’s the right approach for him at the moment.
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