Meet Sheila, Charmaine and Caspar! Sheila was lucky enough to be given a voucher for a shoot by her collegue, Debbie towards the end of last year for her birthday. They waited for the summer to come around - the shoot marks a significant birthday for Sheila this year!
Caspar, a rather handsome 8 year old, whom Sheila has owned for 4 years was scrubbed with in an inch of his life, trimmed and ready for his shoot. As I arrived, Sheila and Charmaine were just putting the finishing touches together. Charmaine popped his bridle on whilst Sheila got changed. A quick dab of hoof oil and we were ready to go!
Sheila has owned Caspar for 4 years now and he is definately a cheeky monkey! He had far too many nicknames for me to remember! Being a very food orientated lad, the girls advised me it was probably best that we didn't take any treats with us during the shoot as we would probably end up being mugged! So we armed ourselves with squeaky toys, bags and plenty to rustle.
Stabled at a lovely local livery yard and farm, there were plenty of places for us to make use of during the shoot. The ladies took it in turns to be photographed with Caspar. Char, Sheila's neice loves taking Caspar jumping, whilst Sheila focuses more on dressage - so, he's very lucky to have the best of both worlds!
Throughout the shoot Caspar kept us on our toes, he kept grabbing the reins and giving them a little nibble when he decided he'd had enough of what we were doing. He was relatively good on the whole, I think the girls were quite suprised at how well he coped. We made sure to vary what we were asking from him, allowing him to have a nibble of grass between outfit changes.
Charmaine told me the story of when they decided to take him showing - he definately objected to it, adding in his own moves to what was being asked and completely refusing to stand still during the line up, she said she's going to stick to the jumping! I loved hearing all about his little antics, what a character!
He has such a gorgeous colour to his coat: blue roan tobiano. Sheila was particularly keen to get some black background shots of Caspar, we found the perfect little barn. I have visited this yard so many times but every time, I find somewhere new and lovely to shoot. With the help of another livery walking past with a very exciting looking plastic bag, we got Caspar's ears forward!
The shoot concluded with Caspar being let free in to his paddock where he showed off those party tricks that Char had told me about during his showing debut! Thank you so much ladies for having me, it was a great morning and I hope you love the pictures!