Annette Chisholm Equestrian Development

23/04/2024

19/04/2023

Moments, the little moments that come and hit you right when you aren’t looking.
This moment in time brought me joy.
But joy comes with a bit of foreboding, like this moment is perfect, what’s next?
What’s going to steal that joy from me?
After losing my 3 horses to different ailments within 2 years of each other and then my dog having to be put to sleep on my birthday, followed by the Covid pandemic, joy moments were tinged with fear.

What I’ve learned, is that you have to be grateful for and in the joy moments.

Nothing in life stays the same, no matter how hard we try to hang on to it.
So we have to appreciate the joy and also be prepared to sit in sorrow, when it comes to visit.

They’re the flip side of the same coin and we can appreciate the joy more, because of the moments of sorrow that we endure.

-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—

This is Lolly.

She is a small red mare who is teaching me more about my why, teaching me to listen very closely, and teaching me to slow down and be in the moment with her.

We both have walls and defences and a lack of trust, that it will be ok.
Together, we’re trying to find the trust in each other.

One moment at a time.

This moment was magical.

17/10/2019

It is said that everything happens for a reason.
Some of the reasons I’m still yet to find out but with Wil in his new home I had more time to spend with Gatsby and that included a weekly trip out to Ballangeigh Run for a ride with my friend Gritje.
I had been watching one of the foals out there with stars in my eyes for close to 4 years since he had been born (also on my birthday). He was in the process of being started undersaddle and Gritje asked if I would like to give him his 4th ride. It involved popping on and basically following his paddock mate Ramba Zamba as he was ridden around the arena.
We had a saddle on, but were just riding him in a halter at that point in time.
When I hopped off, Gritje mentioned that he would never be large enough to accomodate her long legs and tall frame and as she knew I was in love with him, would I be interested in buying him?
I’d dreamed of owning him, but thought that it was a bit of a pipe dream.
He was judged best performance style warmblood horse in Australia as a foal, his full sister had gone top 10 at dressage with the stars. I thought I could never afford such a horse and that he would be wasted with me.
But horses don’t care about potential, they don’t care about ribbons, they just live in the moment and how that moment makes them feel.
And so Ballangeigh Run Rumpelstilzchen became my baby, I hadn’t gone shopping for a young horse and with Gats taking up a lot of time I thought I could just bring him along nice and slowly.
So around the 12th of February 2017 I loaded Gatsby up on the float to be the uncle for my new young horse coming home.

What has that to do with Wil?

Everything.

I’d still been giving Wil’s new owner lessons on him since he had been sold, but she had ongoing back issues which had flared up again which prevented her from riding for a bit.
In the meantime I’d been making sure that they were getting hay at a reasonable cost and delivering more when they had run out.

They had talked of getting a larger place as Wil being the size that he was, took a lot of fuel to keep in tip top condition.
It was a post from her husband that made me think they were moving to a larger property just down the road. But when I messaged her about it she said they were moving to Queensland and if I knew of anyone that would buy Wil.

The floor quite literally dropped out of my world. I had sold him to a ‘forever home’ and yet here we were 8 months later and he was on the market again...
As I had just purchased LB (Rumplestilzchen)
There was no way I could afford to buy Wil back and if I had known that he would be for sale again, I would have handled things very differently.
I said as much to Wil’s owner and she became very defensive and she cut communication. I sent another couple of messages trying to find out where Wil was after they had left for Queensland but she never responded.

I received a video from another person I knew showing her daughter riding the big man, Wil was a big moving, very sensitive horse that had a mouth like a silk glove.
In the video, the child was doing her very best to ride him but I was horrified to see her flapping the reins at him and thumping his sides with her heels to get him to go into canter.
This for the horse that you only had to breathe in, swing your seat a little and move your leg a fraction to achieve canter.

I literally broke down and howled like a broken hearted child for the punishment that he was receiving, all because I’d trusted his new owner.

In a way even though he was alive, he was as far from me as he could be.
I spent the next few months trying to track down where he had gone and in the process had to grieve for his loss even though he was still very much alive.

I had heard he was out St Helens way so went for some drives out there to see if I could find him, with no success.

It was quite a few months before I could track him down with the help of a friend but I didn’t know if he had been sold or leased or just plain given away.

16/10/2019

Wil and I had many adventures together. Sometimes just around the block, sometimes further afield.
One of our best trail riding adventures was the 2010 Great Western Trail ride. 55kms over 2 days with some friends.
So much fun, so much stress in the lead up when Wil who’d never had an abscess the entire time I’d owned him, developed one only a month before departure for the ride.
It was a disaster for our preparation and I was concerned that not only would he still be unsound in the lead up, it was playing hell with trying to keep him fit.
Things have a way of working out and he regained soundness a fortnight out, but as the vet had to open the sole to release the pus there was a hole in the sole of his foot that was just begging a rock to do more damage.
Wil had a special pair of shoes for our treck that had sole protection pads under the shoes to stop anything from getting lodged where it shouldn’t.
It was the only time he had or would wear shoes while I owned him but they served their purpose and we had a wonderful time on the ride.
Cos was along for the ride too, being ridden by a friend and I’ll tell his story when it’s his turn down the track.
There are so many stories I could tell such as the time I entered him in a dressage competition not realising (way back then) that the arena was only 40 x 20.
Keep in mind that Wil was around 17.2h so the judges wry comment on the bottom of the score sheet was ‘a nice test from a big horse in a small arena.’
It made me appreciate every centimetre of space that could be used and that your horse has to be on the aids and supple to be able to handle the more confined space.
Lessons learned and memories made from a wonderful teacher and reliable best friend.
There were many other horses come and go but Wil was special and I’d said I’d keep him with me forever.
But unfortunately situations change and Wil found himself being pretty much a paddock ornament (through no fault of his own).
Gatsby had come along and was needing so much of my time and energy that reliable old W***y was fading into the background.
Around this time I began giving a few lessons to a friend on Wil, she was having a bit of a struggle with her own horse’s soundness and suitability for what she was wanting to do.
She fell in love with riding the big fella just like I did all those years ago too.
One Sunday while myself and the family were on a hike in Mt Eccles, she rang me to ask me a question, would I consider selling Wil?

It stopped me in my tracks as I’d never considered that an option at all.

We talked about other options such as a lease etc but with her having promised him a lifetime home and knowing that I would still get to see him often, I agreed to think about it and give her an answer as soon as I could.
The things that ran through my mind were that he was now wasted with me, sitting in a paddock when he could be teaching someone else the wonderful lessons he’d taught me.
That she would benefit from his calm reliable nature and to be able to do the things that were on her horsey bucket list.
That I knew he would be well looked after as she had taken very good care of all of her own horses.
Again, that I would see him often as I was still giving her lessons and she didn’t live too far from me.
On that basis, the most important being the lifetime home, I agreed to sell him to her.
So on the 14th of July 2016 I loaded Wil up for the last time and delivered him to his new home.
I was sad that he wasn’t mine anymore but I was rapt that he was going to be loved and looked after like I had done for him over the last 10 years that I had owned him.
It was all like it was meant to be, perfect ending...
or so I thought.

12/10/2019

This little lady has helped to heal my broken heart. Today her owner came over to see how she’s been going and to enjoy some saddle time with her.
Little miss is not perfect, she’s a green work in progress, but she’s the reason I haven’t just given up and said stuff it, it’s all too hard.
Thanks for trusting her with me. ❤️
So glad to have the opportunity to continue our Journey together and excited for what’s yet to come 😁

10/10/2019

Please accept my apologies for not posting more of Wil’s story for a while. It’s been difficult to recount as I not only lost my best buddy but also a friend in the process.
I promise the next phase of the story will be told soon.

08/09/2019

Theoretically Wil should have been able to jump and he proved that he could lift himself over single jumps quite well and cross country was fun for him.

Show jumping courses... not so much.

After our cross country fun, I decided to give him one last crack at showjumping to see if he would now be able to handle the idea of it better.

Again Robbie Allen was available at a show jumping clinic a few months later, so I packed up both Cos and Wil and thought let’s see what the big boy can do now.

A friend was riding Cos which left me free to concentrate on Wil and the day started relatively well.
We did ground pole Grids without any tripping and started progressing up the heights.
60cm wasn’t too much of a problem then Robbie bumped it up to 75cm and added a one stride double.
The course was fine, we got around all the jumps until the double.
Where we hit the first element, cleared the second.
I knew I didn’t have my canter rhythm quite right coming in to the jump so Robbie sent us around to approach the jump again.
Canter was good, first element cleared, one stride and we took the top pole with us over the second element.
Do it again...
Clip the first, clear the second...
Sigh, do it again...
Clear the first, hit the second...
Sigh, do it again...
Robbie was scratching his head, canter was good, I wasn’t getting in his way...
Do it again!
Knock a rail
Do it again...
Knock a tail
Do it again...
No matter which way I rode him at the jump he couldn’t clear both elements.
We jumped that double 20 times (40 jumps) and in the end I pulled the pin and said to Robbie he’s never going to make it, he’s tried for me but he’s just not a jumper.

Robbie was a bit gutted that we just couldn’t get it, having been there from the start and seen where the big lad had come from but he agreed there was no point in flogging him to try to make him jump better.

It wasn’t the end of Wil’s jumping, we still had the occasional Cross Country jump, but it was the end of me thinking I could perhaps one day take him eventing.

The highlight of the day was hopping on Cos at the end of the day.

I asked if I could take Cos for a spin around the course one last time over some bigger jumps at the end of the day and Robbie said sure, so we bumped up the jumps to around 90cm and had a blast rocketing around the course.

Robbie had thought that I had 2 horses that couldn’t jump but Cos was looking after my friend at the time and taking it slow and steady (and low) for her.

He lived for jumping and was keen to have a run. We had an absolute ball and finished the day on a high note.

Wil’s favourite thing was trail riding and he could do a handy little dressage test.
Cos’s favourite thing was jumping, any kind of jumping and he tolerated doing flatwork which made his jumping better.
If I could have combined the 2 horses I would have had a cracker of an eventer.

Instead I had 2 horses that made me proud of the everything that they gave me and appreciative of what they taught me and of what they would try for me ❤️

08/09/2019

There are many funny moments that I had with Wil, there were many joyous moments, there were many moments where we were just together enjoying each other’s company.
It built a relationship of mutual trust, but I had to rescue his backside on more than one occasion...

He was a terror for seeing if he could push through a fence to get food on the other side.
While the fences were electric it was ok but one day the fences got turned off and weren’t turned back on again for a while.
While they were off some cows chewed sections of the fence rendering them pretty useless.

At this point Wil almost rubbed his hooves together in glee.
The tasty tender shoots that had been out of reach were all of a sudden accessible.
The only problem was the fences were no match for 800 odd kgs of long legged horse.
I arrived home from work one sunny day and called for Wil who was out in the back paddock. Normally he’d neigh in answer and come fanging in to see what we were doing/going.
He answered me but didn’t appear.
The first pricks of alarm happened as I was walking up the paddock to go get him and he was calling out but not appearing.
Popping through the alley into the back paddock I was expecting to see him somewhere but nope no horse...
By this stage I was running to where I could hear him calling out and when I got there my heart stopped in my chest.
The big fella was stuck I’ll say over the fence...
his near side was on one side of the fence and his off side was on the other. He’d threaded one front leg through the wires and had been there for a little while from the amount of poo that was drying behind him.
He was REALLY glad to see me and had a look on his face like ‘so whatcha going to do now?’
The only option was to cut the wire to get him out but the wire cutters were all the way back in the shed and no one else was home.
I was worried that he’d panic if I left him to go get the wire cutters but having no other option I bolted like a rabbit for it’s hole back to the shed to grab the wire cutters and a halter.
Wil started calling out as soon as I left and I was worried he’d start trying to get himself out with bad consequences.
Wire cutters and halter in hand I bolted back to my dork in distress to find he’d broken the top wire but was still firmly stuck.
One by one the wires went ping and he was free.
A few small cuts on his offside fetlock where he’d threaded his leg between the wires and an abrasion between his back legs where he’d burned himself rubbing on the wires trying to work out how to get himself out, we got out of it relatively scott free.
He was a bit sore and sorry for himself though so he had a few days off work and a bit of extra TLC.
Reflecting later I couldn’t quite believe, how lucky I was to have a horse that would trust that his human would come rescue his oversized behind when he got himself into these scrapes.
It was part of what made him so special (and also just a bit worrying 😂)

04/09/2019

While W***y never loved jumping and in fact sometimes riding him in to a jump felt like he had a hand brake on. He got to be ok at it.
As I mentioned earlier I never pushed him up the heights as his heart just wasn’t in it.
We did get to have some fun though and it came about literally by accident.

I’d been getting Cos fit for hunt season and also the upcoming eventing season and things were going well.
We had a clinic coming up with Will Einziger and Emily Anker and I was excited to be able to put Cos over some of the bigger jumps up at Albert Park.

A fortnight before that clinic I took Cos away for the weekend to Bendigo for a horsemanship clinic.
While we were there Cos decided that he really only needed 3 good legs and popped one through a fence, quite nicely stripping the flesh off the front of his cannon bone on his near hind.

That meant he was out of action for the foreseeable future and meant that the next in line was Wil.

I’d had Cos jumping around 90cm but that wasn’t an option for Wil so we downgraded to knee high for him and set off for the clinic.

Dressage with Emily was great, Wil loved to work and he was good at it. He was soft forward and coming through from behind to the bridle really nicely.
Showjumping was ok, he was as normal, handbrake on going in to a jump that he could quite possibly have stepped over with his eyes closed.
He and I endured the exhortions to get him more forward to the jump...

I was actually dreading going out on to the cross country course.

Our first jump was a small coop that we got our front half over and that’s where we stopped...
I sat there stranded mid Jump, with Wil happily ignoring my efforts to move him on and inwardly cringing at my huge horses somewhat embarrassing lack of ability in front of Will Einziger....
who asked me if I had a whip.
I hadn’t ridden Wil with a whip for sometime having worked really hard to get him more responsive to leg without having to use it.
Whip now in hand Wil dragged himself over the coop and we headed off to the next jump.
A drop jump. Here we didn’t need to have the whip in hand at all.
He was quite happy with this style of jumping and Wil even used us as a demonstration of how the jump should be approached.
It was what I thought would be our best moment of the day.
I never thought that my big goof and I would be used as an example.

From there we went around a few more jumps until we landed at a double.
It was a 3 stride then a 2 stride on a curving line and I was like we’re never going to be able to get this.
But we’ll always have a crack at anything, the only way to learn to be better is to fail.

Failure and I were old friends where Wil, jumping and I were concerned.

We got our canter rhythm set and approached the jumps with our usual handbrake on feeling coming in to the first element.
We made it over the first and were on stride for the second, as Wil actually took me to the jump.

I’d never had that feeling from him before and it felt amazing!!

I asked Will E. If I could take him around again to a resounding yes.
Fully expecting the big fella to go back to feeling backwards coming in to the jump again, I was delighted when he took me in with ears pricked and jumped the double foot perfect.

I think the smile on my face would have put the Cheshire Cat to shame.

For the rest of the cross country lesson we popped jumps and each time Wil took me to the jump. I didn’t have to push him and it is still one of the best days of my life.
We weren’t jumping huge jumps but we did it well, and we both enjoyed it.

That day is one that will stay with me forever as cherished memories of the day when Wil found his cross country wings.

Was I tempted to push him to start eventing him and see if we could do any good...

maybe...

But we still sucked at showjumping and Wil still approached those jumps with his handbrake on.

Oh well, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad!

28/08/2019

Sorry about the long delay between posts, it’s hard for me to write about Wil as I’m still grieving for him.
The real problem with loving a horse so deeply is the depth of sorrow that you feel when they are no longer there.

Wil really was rather unique.

He was a massive gentle giant who could be so well put together and move so beautifully and in the next instant be tripping over his own feet...

Which leads me to our foray into him learning how to jump....

Ground poles.

They’re about 100mm round if you get a thick one.
So not very high considering the horse was over 17h.

Wil would manage to stumble over at least one of them every day when we first introduced them to him.

Once he got the idea that you weren’t supposed to touch them, we started putting grids, cross rails and tiny little uprights together.

Once he had the concept of maintaining his tempo and rhythm we booked in for a Robbie Allen clinic and I put my brave girl pants on for the public ‘humiliation’ that I knew it would be.

Wil didn’t fail me.

The first day of the clinic dawned clear and cool. We packed up the jumping saddle, travelled into town and as we were in the baby set, we saddled up almost immediately...

Robbie Allen is a fabulous instructor who knows how to encourage whilst educating but even he was scratching his head when my big lug did his first round....
If there were 2 poles on a jump he would knock them both down and if there were 9 jumps in the course....
Well we were like a massive cannon ball laying waste to every single jump.

Robbie kindly said that the big ones can take a bit of time to work out where their legs needed to go in order to get over the jumps.
I was just proud of the big fella not getting rattled by what I was asking him to do which was way outside his comfort zone...

On the way out of the very first lesson, an unkind soul said loud enough for me to hear ‘well you can see he has no talent for jumping’

I walked back to the float shattered for my big man, he was trying his heart out for me and toward the end he’d worked out to start lifting himself over them instead of being like a 17h wrecking ball.

Perhaps she did us a favour... I was determined to show her that he could do it...

The following day we were back at it again, I’m not sure if Wil read the jumping handbook overnight but it seemed a switch had gone off in his head.
He had worked out that we didn’t want to hit the jumps but instead go over them.
We progressed from trot rounds to canter rounds and finished up going double clear over a 60cm course.

Whoop de doo right!
It’s not huge, nor very technical but from where we had started to where we had finished there was a hell of a lot of improvement that was made in the middle.
Robbie agreed and we were awarded the most improved combination of the clinic.

As tempting as it was to give the unkind lady the middle finger on our way out of the arena. I just smiled at her and said ‘who knew the big fella would be able to grow some wings’

Wil never really loved jumping, he tolerated it and would go through the motions for me but he just didn’t love it the way that my other horse Cos did.
Somewhere I have a photo of Wil jumping a dazzleboard jump around 75cm looking somewhat like a preying mantis with his eyes firmly shut.

It always made me laugh. Another funny little Wil moment that just made him so endearing.

Although he showed plenty of scope, I never really pushed him past 80cm, as his heart wasn’t in it and I wasn’t going to force him to do something that he didn’t really like.

We got to enjoy another form of jumping but that’s a story for another day.

The photo below is from the last Robbie Allen clinic that we did.
The jump was around 75cm but Wil gave it a little ‘extra’.

Not bad for a wrecking ball 😉

18/08/2019

Sometimes you get what you need not what you want...

Wil, gorgeous goofy Llanavar Wilander was supposed to be for my beginner husband to come trail riding with me....
He came to me thin and a little injured.
All 17 + hands of him...
I brought him on the recommendation of a friend who had ridden him in some lessons and she was a self acknowledged nervous Nellie.
He had scraped his fairly exposed ribs on a broken tree branch in his sparse paddock resulting in a relatively deep cut right where the girth would sit so I couldn’t trial ride him at all, but I liked the look of the big lanky goofball who’s gentle nature was evident from day one!
His then owner said that if he wasn’t everything she had said he was she would take him back within 3 months no questions asked.
Seemed like a good deal, but at the time I had no idea how good that deal was.
I set about getting some weight on those ribs and seeing what sort of lad he was.
He was a bit pushy on the ground, a bit worried about my somewhat smaller float than he was used to but overall seemed like a nice enough lad!
Fast forward a couple of months, having upgraded the size of everything required (bridle saddle etc) and having satisfactorily covered his ribs, I put his new saddle on him and gave him a ‘lunge’ and literally 5 minutes in he was like really 🤷🏻‍♀️ do we have to do this?
Back when I had more bravery than brain I thought what the hell and piled on board.
Close to 18 months since he’d had a rider on his back, big man was all business. Walk, trot, no worries...
Let’s see how he goes out down the road?
A little bit wobbly heading down the road he was a bit looky but pretty compliant all things considered.
We had a few moments where things didn’t go quite to plan, a grader growled its way past us without Wil turning a hair however a blue nitrile glove that had fallen out of a Ute onto the road was 20 minutes of him saying I think it might eat me and me trying to convince him that nitrile gloves weren’t carnivorous (with eventual success!)
I also found out that he wasn’t a fan of puddles/ditches and the miniature ponies up on the corner elicited some moves that had me in awe of his power and eventual beauty.
He did stop at first glance of them and then proceeded to ‘passage’ his way past them giving them side eye all the way going you look like horses, smell like horses but who the hell shrunk you 🤣
No sign of any buck, bolt or bolshy behaviour though and we made it home in one piece with me hopeful that he would make a good ‘caretaker’ of my husbands keen but inexperienced behind.
He was everything his old owner had said he was and more.
But there were a few funny moments when I tried putting him over some jumps.
I’d been told that he had jumped 1.10mt and I was excited about this big warmblood that had some dressage ability and apparently jumping ability as well.
After a bit of getting him fit, I thought I’d pop him over some jumps and see how he felt.
First jump was a 60cm cross rail which he managed to knock down. Thinking he was like nah, too small, I bumped him up to 75cm where he kept running out on me no matter how I rode him at it...
getting in contact with his old owner I was told he had free jumped with his breeders at
1.10mt but not with a rider 😳
Any wonder he has pulling out on me 🤔
We booked in to a Jumping clinic with Robbie Allen to see if we could teach him how to jump and in the meantime I started doing small grids to get him thinking about lifting his by now somewhat bulky backside off the ground...
more about that on the next post 😊

14/08/2019

Numb....

There’s no other way to describe the next few days.

In times like these, your body and mind tend to go into a state of shutdown. I think it’s a protection measure to stop you from going mad to be honest.

The shock of losing Gatsby so suddenly...
Of losing his big presence in my paddock and the deep deep whickers when I would appear with or without food.
Of losing the connection that we had.
Of losing the hopes and dreams that I had for him and for us and what we would achieve together.
Of losing the future we had, where we did more good things, and I could care for him into his last years as an old horse.

All of that was torn away and I went on a hunt to see what I’d missed...
The signs that should have been there to show that he was in pain, to show that there was something wrong.
I went over his feed, his worming regime, the paddock he was in and the only thing that came back was the scatter of food in his bin the night before.
If I had gathered it up, it would have amounted to less than half a handful.
That was the only sign that something was amiss but he had wandered off to go play with the other horses and they played hard so no alarm bells rang.

Dr Andrew Cust had remarked on that night, that from the vitals and tests results Gatsby had, he should have been throwing himself around and on the ground in pain.
He’d actually had horses who had done just that when all they really needed to do was fart (his words haha)
So Gatsby’s final lesson for me was to never underestimate the amount of pain a horse can be in just because they do not show it.

I spent the next few days on a pendulum swinging between grief, disbelief, and shock.

I then received a letter in the mail from the Ballarat Equine Clinic which contained a beautiful card signed by the attending vets from that night and a lock of Gatsby’s tail.
It was such a thoughtful gesture and it gave me something to hold on to.

Instead of working through the process of grieving, I shut those feelings down, it was too raw, too hard to deal with just then so I tried to move on with life.

But funny things would happen, I was vague, withdrawn, and the drive I had to keep going had died too.
I stopped going to the gym, I wouldn’t ride unless I had to get on a clients horse. I shied away from getting too close to LB.
He and Cos were still cared for and all of their physical needs were met, but I distanced myself from them as a protective measure I think.

After a month or so, I realised what I was doing and made an effort to start functioning better again.

It was around this time that I found my old boy Wil!
I’d never given up hope of finding him again and the timing was perfect.

Over the next few days I’ll begin to tell his story.