Let's just say yesterday was an interesting ride. Well, no, let's say more: Major had a few days off, but that is consistently how it works. Went out to do a medium fast ride and let him move a bit since the trails have dried up. Heading out he was a slowpoke, so much so I (again) worried that something was wrong. He tricks me like this every couple months. Out to the lake not a perfect gentleman but listening...then we turned for home. Was OK, a bit iffy, so we worked on backtracking, sidepassing, turning, etc. All was better until the uphill for the forest, when I was on a horse careening up the path. Completely annoyed, I turned him back and we worked back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until turning up that hill wasn't such a good idea. At one point I directed him in a straight line down the trail, he veered into the rocks, so I just pointed him up the bank, thinking he'd reconsider. Instead we stumbled over boulders, leaped up the 3-foot sand bank, running into the sticker bushes and finally circling to some form of stop, far above where we should have been. After about 20 minutes (our GPS track is funny with all the overlap, a big dark blue line) we went much more calmly up the hill towards home. |
| half-moon rock |
Luckily things went better after that, but I was just so annoyed. We'll be starting back to much more arena work, listening exercises, and hopefully see some improvement. Coming home the trail was a nice curvy path we usually trot, but at this point we walked, trying to behave, and did lots of exercises on whoa, stand, back up and retrace the path.
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