Diva (Melland Queen of Scots) usually gets her summer coat quite early compared to other horses and ponies, but this year she has been holding onto hers for a lot longer.
Like in the winter when the short days encourage the winter coat to form, the trigger to make ponies moult in the spring is the daylight getting longer. I wonder if the fact that the rain has been relentless this spring has tricked the ponies a little, as the cloudy skies made the days dull and dark.
Thankfully, she has now decided to finally allow some of her floof to come out! There are various grooming tools that will help get the coat out. I tend to use an old-fashioned rubber curry comb or a Furminator that a friend gave me several years ago, which is a metal-toothed rake. The coat is still not coming out quite as much as I would expect, so does she know something about the weather that I don’t? Are we going to have a cold snap?
When her coat starts to come out in handfuls she leaves little furry patches when she rolls in the field. Birds take advantage of that, and you will often see them flying away to line their nests with Shetland pony hair.
I love the fact that Shetland ponies get such short, sleek summer coats after having a very long and thick winter one. At the moment it is hard to imagine a sleek Diva as, although her coat is changing, it is a long way from what she will look like – hopefully soon.
Storm Kathleen blew through over the weekend but, although it dried up the field nicely, it didn’t help me by blowing away any of Diva’s floof!
Once again I threw Arlo in at the deep end, affiliating him purely for the Arena UK second round show, and once again he pulled it out the bag. How lucky am I to have such a wonderful little horse? We haven’t really competed this year. I don’t really compete over the winter, and also my horsebox was away for repairs up until the beginning of June, so I had no transport even if I’d wanted to.
With the dry ground we don’t seem to be having much luck with shoes, as little madam managed to pull both her front shoes off within 12 hours the other day! We entered the arena with two shoes on for a schooling session and left it with one missing (took about an hour to find it). Then that afternoon, as I went to put some hoof ointment on, I looked down and had to double take, thinking I was looking at the wrong hoof. But, no, the other shoe was missing too.
After having a long wait and some lunch at the onsite café, it was time to get ready for the Joan Wolfe Overall Supreme Shetland Pony Championship. I got changed out of my usual showing outfit into black trousers and a maroon top with white spots, as you are expected to be a bit more “bling” in the evening.
We were all set to go for our next outing, and were super excited. That was until I heard the dreaded clunk of a loose shoe! I checked it over, praying it wasn’t too loose, but, nope, it was going to need a refit.