Dibden Tikideeboo

"Tiki" is a New Forest pony. She spent a portion of her early years on the open range in the New Forest of England. The New Forest is a large area where ponies roam free. There are three towns in the New Forest and it is not unusual to see a few ponies walking the shopping areas and even walking into outdoor seating areas at pubs. There are grates on the roads when you enter the New Forest to contain the ponies.

We bought her from Liz Thomas at the age of 2 years. Liz had the pony for only a short time and Tiki was probably bought at aution, which they hold from time to time to thin out the herd.
She flew to New York and was quarantined for two weeks.

Larry Poulin broke Tiki to carriage driving in Florida at Black Prong and at his farm in Petersham, Massachusetts. Tiki was a good pony to break, but could occaisionally jump 15 feet in the air to the right or left without notice with the two wheel training carriage on her back. This resulted in some off road experiences thru brush and in trees. Larry bent an axle on a carriage.

As time went on Tiki started to really enjoy carriage driving and has done well at training level. She won Black Prong CDE 2007 training level. My wife, Jody broke Tiki to saddle. She was very easy to break to saddle, but wanted to be talked to because of her prior training to drive. When Jody gave her a leg aid, early in her saddle training, she would turn around and try to bite at her boot. I could imagine her saying to herself " Don't push on me like that... just say trot."

This year we are going up a level to preliminary. We are working on a better frame and the lengthened trot to become competitive at Dressage. Tiki has always done well at the other phases of the CDE e.g. Cones and Marathon.

This year we will be at Lord Sterling CDE, Garden State CDE and Elk Creek CDE. Tiki will also go to Waldingfield and CT Driving Trial

More pics and stories will follow.


Monday, October 6, 2008

Gladstone CDE 2008




Maybe the last CDE here for a while. This beautiful venue was almost cancelled this year due to a low number of entries. They will hold a pleasure show next year. Looks like we may have to go to Lexington CDE next year....much longer drive for us.




Tiki did very well here in Preliminary pony with very good competitors. We won dressage but only because a friend of mine went off course for 5 penalty points. We were in the middle of the pack on a long and difficult marathon course with beautiful views of the Gladstone area in section A.


A special thanks to the private property owners that allowed us to use their beautiful properties as part of the course.




Cones...oh well...Tiki picked up a young person trying to reset the cones on the course in her blinders. Not usually a problem....but this young lady was holding the measuring stick like a weapon held high in the air. Tiki looked so hard at it that I expected to see a run away outside the arena.... by the time I got her settled we blasted the first cone set of an offset series. No doubt about that ball going down.




We dropped to third after holding second place after marathon. Not a bad showing for us....My daughter again navigated for me and Tiki did very well in the water hazards, where we had some issues in past events.




I had a blast and the weather was picturebook