Wow cant believe that it been almost 2 months since i last updated this blog! Rowan is doing really really well he was finally turned out in the field a couple of weeks ago. He took to being led straight away I lead him around the stable a few times over a few days before venturing our into the yard. After a week of wandering about the yard and sand school he was let loose into the sand school for the first time. He wasn't sure what to do at first now he was free he then exploded and had a good gallop round the school for nearly 20 mins before coming back to me. We then started our new routine of going for a walk before letting him loose for a couple of hours each day. Once we were doing this everything suddenly became 100 times easier. Once he had had his daily run around he was so much calmer and his attention span seemed better. After a couple of weeks of being lose in the school I started to turn my mare Oska out in the school with him for a while. Oska has a reputation of being a bit anti social when it comes to other horses but she seems to have taken to Rowan like she has few others. After the snow I made the decision to leave Rowan out in the school overnight with Oska which went well. The two of them stayed in the school for a week until Oska took the decision about when to move them to the field by rubbing herself raw on the fencing (shes usually behind electric fencing to stop her from doing this) and threatening to break through the fence! So we tied plastic bags to the electric fence to make the wire more visible and let them go and they have been out ever since.

We have also started to do some more groundwork with Rowan going over poles between jump wings over plastic pipes that sort of thing. Today we have done lots and lots of practice at going through electric fence gates which had presented themselves as being a slight issue. He is very confident having his front feet picked up and will let me pick them up anywhere anytime. He still needs some work on his back feet though he is getting better. We have the farrier coming on Thursday so we are doing lots of preparation for that by holding his feet at different angles as the farrier will and getting him used to having objects round his feet. Most of the time he just gives me a look as though he has done it a thousand times before! He accepted being tied up pretty quickly too, he is more than happy being tied up in the yard with or without another horse around.

Hopefully in the next few weeks we will continue with improving his groundwork and his manners. He is a little bit over confident at the moment and has started to push boundaries a little bit so we have toughened up a little bit and installing a few manners. Hopefully we will also be teaching him to load over the next few weeks  (since he has been turned out we have discovered that he moves rather well and so are planning on taking him out to some in-hand shows locally). He is also going to meet both the farrier and the vet in the next week or so.

We got there in the end

It may have taken a while but we got the headcollar on in the end.

Rowan really really did not like the headcollar or the scarf or anything else strange for that matter coming into his stable for a while. I took to carrying it around with me every time i went into his stable for about a week and  then with the aid of food eventually got it close enough for it to touch him. Then we did a bit of clicker like training (same kind of principal but i was kind of making it up as we went along and he isnt keen on the clicking) getting him putting his nose through. The break through however came when I sat with him while he ate his feed and got him to put his head through the headcollar (noseband undone but head piece done up) and then got his ears through it He then went off and had a bit of a think about it until he realized that there was still food in his bowl and he came back allowing me to do the noseband up and it was on. Have done it a few more times but for now the headcollar is staying on to get him used to it.

So now hopefully we will finally progress to getting him out in the next few days. That is if the weather allows (our yard was like a skating ring this morning).