Friday 10 June 2011

Lucy's going home present

Lucy went home yesterday and she has made such good progress that her owner and I thought it would be useful (and fun for her!) to pop a couple of our xc jumps before she went home.
I took Felix  - neither he nor Lucy had been jumping in ages and so once they realised what was happening they were both beside themselves.  I had my camera in my pocket and took a few clips of Lucy - she just wanted to GO for it and even though I edited out the squeals of excitement you can see she could hardly contain herself!
It was great to see her taking the first steps on the road back to being an eventer and I hope there will be lots more updates about her before too long.


Lucy goes jumping from Nic Barker on Vimeo.

After we'd done all that, I went back and looked at the photos from the first time Sam came and rode her.
Of course its not easy to compare just by looking at 2 such different photos, but her stance and topline are so much better now (below) than in March (the photo above); you can feel it as a rider, its not just in these photos - really, that's all down to better hooves and better biomechanics and it will get even better as she grows the rest of her new, balanced hoof capsule.

9 comments:

Han said...

Wow.. she's looking fab! She's such a nice mare. Looking forward to the updates!

Nic Barker said...

Me too :-)

jenj said...

I didn't know you could do that many flying lead changes up to a fence! My does she look like she's having fun - I'm sure she's going to be so happy to get back to her "real" job as an eventer!

Anonymous said...

You really can see the difference in development between when she arrived and when she left... what an awesome job you guys did. My mare is being started under saddle this summer and I'm hoping to see some of that same change in her after I put a summer full of riding on her. It's so hard to keep a horse in good shape when you can't get on! :D

Nic Barker said...

Thanks RRS but she did most of it herself :-) She is one of the boldest, bravest horses you could wish to meet and a little cracker!

cptrayes said...

I love the ones who do cross country or hunt before they leave you!

They aren't doing a bad job for cripples with an incurable disease, are they :-) ???????

C

Lucie said...

My god she looks like a COMPLETELY different horse in the side shots!!
She looks amazing!!

Nic Barker said...

LOL C - to be fair Lucy came here much sounder than many, when the problem was at a very early stage, thanks to Sam's vigilence and refusal to bute her and rider her - which the vets wanted :-(

ellajarvis said...

Really fascinating to see the change in top line. my little mare has always struggled with topline but since our accident, and turning her away bare foot, it has now developed. I never thought the two could be link but reading this had made ne think!

Fantastic progress for Lucy, I wish you both the best of luck for the future.