Diesel's Story :) 

We have quite a few ponies that pass through the doors of Tye Lane. Of course we will follow our permanent residents on a regular basis, but often our none permanent residents have some interesting stories or issues. Diesel has been at Tye Lane for about a year now. We bought him from a lady who had originally purchased him for her daughter, only to find that he was too much of a handful for them. He was a bit scrawny, very green and a little bit silly!

Diesel's early schooling

Diesel had little respect for people on the ground, was very spooky to ride and would sometimes get stubborn and reverse himself to the gate when he didn't want to do something! He also paces, which makes cantering a difficult thing to achieve. Diesel has had lots of work from lunging and long reining, to riding with a bungee for a short while at the beginning of each session, to improving his confidence hacking, gradually getting him to lead parts of the ride. He has also had a great deal of handling on the ground and has now become accustomed to being tied up on the yard and has stopped barging into people! We quickly discovered he had a love of jumping and we used this as a reward to make sessions more fun and interesting.

This video was taken at the end of last summer. As you can see, he loves to jump but getting the canter is always an issue! He has greatly improved in this but I will post more on dealing with pacers later!

Diesel in his first British Novice Class

Now Diesel has begun competing in British Novice classes and is showing real talent. He still has some issues, like his pacing and occasional moments where he gets a bit spooky and silly but we are working on these and hope to find him a home where he can be competed successfully! :)