Hacked Off 16.07.10

Well we went out hacking completely solo yesterday (in a howling gale again lol!!)

I did the first 15 minutes just hand walking with her, up the lane, past the scary fishing lakes and then got on her from a random fence as we turned onto the cricketfield bridleway (have treeless will mount from anything I can stand on...or get horse to stand in!)

Bally was nicely forwards and although a little looky at things she wasn't overly spooky which was great considering we hadn't been down that particular bridleway before
Had a lovely trot and she came back nicely without any bother, then we got slightly lost and ended up in a lightly harrowed bit that used to be a pathway...and had a lovely lovely canter along the edge where the ground was softest.
Ended up in a bit of a dead end and had to turn back and sadly when we got back onto the bridleway and headed for home Bally blotted her copybook a bit!

She tried to jog off so I halted her with my seat, asked for walk on...jog...halt...sideways evasion.... HALT with neck rope and seat...walk on..jog. HALT..foot throwing, re-applied halt aids and ooops up she went :-o

Cracked her once on the backside to get her forward as I simply will not tolerate that antsy tantrum behaviour then asked her to halt again. This went on for about ten minutes and it was extremely hard not to to be tempted in to take a pull on the reins and just keep my halt from body into a steady hand, although we did have a one rein circle at one stage as she was flinging her head at me and bouncing up again :-$

It was a bit of a battle of wills and I'm actually quite chuffed that I stuck to my guns, remained calm and just repeated my halt, walk on, halts everytime she did anything other than what I was asking for and didn't let her get to me...her frustration was understandable but not acceptable and I just wasn't going to get into an escalating fight about it

It worked thank goodness and she gracefully walked on, accepted a couple more walk, halt, walk transitions (with much less aiding applied) calmly and so on we pootled.

Stayed on her and rode onto the lane and presented her with the challenge of walking up the lane between the scary lakes, past a car disgorging a couple of excited children feeding the ducks.
She stopped and baulked a little and I let her have a breather and take it in then asked her to walk on, then trot past and she did, nicely straight no spooking what a good girl!!! YAY

Back onto our little lane and I let her take the rein a little longer, then hopped off half way down so we in hand walked the last five minutes to let her have a wind down.

So a good ride despite the shenanigans, nice to know that we can deal with them and move on as I'm sure there'll be plenty more!