hello from Leitrim

[sallygardens]

Hi

I'm new to horses, apart from a few months riding lessons as a child. Our family lives on a sustainable smallholding where we grow pretty much all our own food and central heating fuel. We keep pigs, goats, poultry, bees and have raised veggie beds, orchard and a polytunnel.

We recently began to research and become interested in the idea of having a working horse joining us on our smallholding. Luckily we fell into contact with folk who are into natural and positive horsemanship. I've done a couple of courses with Vanessa Bee (Pony Power and also Round Pen). We don't have a horse(s) yet but are on the look out for a heavy cob, 14.2ish, that we can train up ourselves to pull small logs from our woodland and do various little jobs with us around the farm, and possibly some driving to and from our local village (as diesel costs increase), plus some leisure driving down the Leitrim lanes.

So we are barely starting out on our journey of horsemanship but are already hooked and have learned so much about ourselves and horses ... and still a long way to go.

[Elaine]

welcome! *waves* have karmaed you to get you started

[sallygardens]

Thanks Elaine.

We have our horse now, Sally, a 14.2 cob mare, 4 1/2 years old ... with a 7 month old colt ... Conan.

We've already had many ups and downs in the 3 weeks they've been here. It's a rollercoaster ... from dealing with learning how to speak with horses, to dealing with some v negative people who say we are mad and irresponsible to attempt this. I have to say that there has been overwhelming positive support in comparison to the negative although for some reason the negative ones play on my confidence levels much more than they should.

Hope to share and learn from this forum over the coming months/years.

Rebecca

[Elaine]

Congrats on your new equines Would love to see some pics!