Tom. Tom tom. Tom tom tom. Tom tom tom tom.

It’s still early days at pony central.

Tom’s first full day on the yard was yesterday (Tuesday) but it wasn’t a typical day; he was wormed on Monday evening so would have been kept in yesterday as a result.

Yesterday afternoon I schooled Vin first. He was argumentative; he’d had three days off and really didn’t want to be doing anything much. Except argue about what he could and couldn’t do. After 40 minutes of not much fun we started to achieve a semblance of nice work. Afterwards I groomed him, gave him a carrot or two and rugged the chap up.

Then it was Tom’s turn.

Miles, the saddler, has loaned me a saddle to use while Tom’s is being made and, very surprisingly, Vin’s bridle fits Tom like a glove. I had to borrow a Bit though, everything I’ve got is 5.5″ and Tom’s got a 5.75″ mouth.

Tacked up and ready, I led him around to the indoor arena where his eyes boggled right out of his head at the sight of the mirrors along the length of the ‘C’ end. He also wasn’t too sure about going near the podium but, after only a little gentle persuasion, he allowed me to lead him side-on to it to enable me to mount up.

It took Tom about six minutes to get used to the mirrors and then he started concentrating on what I was asking for and he ignored them; I didn’t want anything exciting, I was just checking that the brakes and steering were still in order and slipped in some bending, stretching and simple transitions while we were about it.

And this is why I thought Tom was such a nice chap when I tried him; he was unsure, almost a little bit green, about everything that I asked for but, bless him, he tried his best to do it all. Whereas Vin might say ‘I know what you’re asking, I just can’t be arsed’ and would argue about it, Tom said ‘I don’t really understand all this bending, lengthening and shortening malarky, but I’ll give it a go’.

Hayley and Sammi leaned over the door and made appreciative noises as Tom and I wound down and drew our work to a close. It was a very smiley time afterwards.

However.

I’ve just had a call from Hayley who said ‘Your horse!’ (I straight away knew she meant Tom) ‘He’s been jumping from field to field,’ she said. ‘We caught him and put him in his turnout but he was straight over the fence and in with someone else’.

Um.

I hope this is just exuberance, a bit of high jinks, Tom being excited at being in a new home and wanting to check out his neighbours, but if this continues we’ll have complaints from other owners and that would make things difficult.