Catching Up: Nov 28th “My ‘Oh Crikey!’ moment...”

For possibly not hunting, we have gotten a lot in! Today we hunted with the Kilkenny Hunt and I rode a dreamy “Cleveland Bay Irish Sport Horse” that was 16.3 ¼ hands. I couldn’t have asked for a better horse and can’t begin to tell you what a privilege it was to ride him! It all started out really slow. The hounds were hard at work, but we were just trotting along the sides of the fields... until we came to our first dike (big ditch with water in it) it was a smaller dike averaging about 6 feet a crossed but was very muddy on both the take off and the landing, my horse named “Bornvill” was just a pro; easily trotting right up and hoping a crossed the dike that had already unseated several riders. Next was a huge bog! I had never seen a bog like it before, think of a small pond that went up to the horse’s chests and was (instead of water) was gooey mud, several horses really struggled and one went down, but all were fine. Our next obstacle was a 5 bar Iron Gate, “Bornvill” jumped right in stride and was absolutely wonderful. Just when I thought I was getting the hang of Irish hunting we came a crossed a nearly 8 foot vertical down hill that you had to duck down under trees and bushes to a massive drop in to a deep bog in the river, in between trees. My horse was truly a seasoned hunter even though he hadn’t been out in a while he just waited for me to encourage him then he steadily slid down the hill and leaped down in to the bog as I held the back of the saddle and gave him the reins. It got to the point that some people sent their horses down and came down after them. I must say it was a very good day! We didn’t stop hunting until it was dark and on the way home it looked like a mini fire works show as the sparks flew when the horse’s shoes hit the concrete. We then had dinner at the lovely home of the Irish pony club headquarters, where she let us clean our boots like little kids before a rally on the kitchen floor! On our way home it started to hail and it came down hard though only for a short while, it was -6 degrees Celsius. Ok, that’s all for now, g’night! Thank you so much for doing so much at the barn!