Brief weekend update
This weekend has been mostly around the ponies. I ramble on about those guys enough, but you might like the illustrated version.
Riding out where the heath is recovering from a fire a couple of years back. Black horse on a black background. My coat could use being black for maximum gothness.
Small deigns to enter a puddle. What Zorro and I like to do ( well alright, mostly me ) is wait until Small is daintily skirting a large puddle and then trot right through it beside them for maximum splashage!
A heathland tricolour! The Bell Heather is spectacular at this time of year.
Also, while we were out on this ride a jogger came up behind us very quietly and Zorro suddenly noticed him and shot off. Happily I stayed right in the middle of the saddle and got him stopped after a few strides. I suggested the jogger might want to give a warning when coming up behind horses but I don't think he heard.
Today I had a training mission:
Can Cash pony?
Apparently not, he spent a lot of time pulling back and finding it hard to move forward...
... meanwhile helpful Zorro couldn't work out if I wanted him to bite or kick the pesky yellow horse who kept following him around. Here he was thinking of biting him.
In the end I needed to have a stick to push Cash forward a bit from behind when he got his feet jammed up, but with that we could go along quite nicely. I think if we do a few more sessions like this he will get pretty good at it.
It was a very useful exercise, showing some things I needed to work on with both horses.
After we had worked with Cash I did a bit more schooling with Zorro and at one point we backed right up to the hedge and Zorro caught his tail in a bramble. He swished it and there must have been a bird nest or flock of birds in the hedge because it erupted in furious twittering. The next thing I know we're most of the way up the school at top speed.
I was pleased with how I rode through both of those spooks because they were sudden and fast and I didn't fall off or even really feel like I was going to, when I think I might have in either case a year or two back.
Riding out where the heath is recovering from a fire a couple of years back. Black horse on a black background. My coat could use being black for maximum gothness.
Small deigns to enter a puddle. What Zorro and I like to do ( well alright, mostly me ) is wait until Small is daintily skirting a large puddle and then trot right through it beside them for maximum splashage!
A heathland tricolour! The Bell Heather is spectacular at this time of year.
Also, while we were out on this ride a jogger came up behind us very quietly and Zorro suddenly noticed him and shot off. Happily I stayed right in the middle of the saddle and got him stopped after a few strides. I suggested the jogger might want to give a warning when coming up behind horses but I don't think he heard.
Today I had a training mission:
Can Cash pony?
Apparently not, he spent a lot of time pulling back and finding it hard to move forward...
... meanwhile helpful Zorro couldn't work out if I wanted him to bite or kick the pesky yellow horse who kept following him around. Here he was thinking of biting him.
In the end I needed to have a stick to push Cash forward a bit from behind when he got his feet jammed up, but with that we could go along quite nicely. I think if we do a few more sessions like this he will get pretty good at it.
It was a very useful exercise, showing some things I needed to work on with both horses.
After we had worked with Cash I did a bit more schooling with Zorro and at one point we backed right up to the hedge and Zorro caught his tail in a bramble. He swished it and there must have been a bird nest or flock of birds in the hedge because it erupted in furious twittering. The next thing I know we're most of the way up the school at top speed.
I was pleased with how I rode through both of those spooks because they were sudden and fast and I didn't fall off or even really feel like I was going to, when I think I might have in either case a year or two back.