Thursday 22nd April
After Phil made us a lovely breakfast, I headed down to get Squizzy for her first ride out. I was so excited, I could hardly contain myself. It had all come down to this. All the training, the hours I had spent with her, they were all going to be tested today. Sure, I had made progress and we had reached milestones, She had become accustomed to the saddle, to being ridden, to being in an open area and being told which direction and which gait to go in, and this is not the easiest thing to do, while making it a good deal for the horse. But, today we had to go into unfamiliar territory - into a paddock that she had never been in, and that was about 12 acres, so she had a fair amount of space.
So I headed down, caught her, saddled her, and walked her up the road to the paddock we had to go through to get to the trail. Phil headed down on his old horse Al, as we were going to ride together, I wanted to have an old solid horse with her, to help with her attitude. We got in the paddock, and I started doing some groundwork with her to see where her head was at. She was looking around, but she seemed pretty keen to be there, and fairly excited about it. There were 4 other horses in he paddock to distract her aswell. Now Phil and I had planned to head out on a trail, but Phil asked me the time and it turned out to be 15 minutes before he had to leave home. So we decided to just hack around the paddock for a while - it is a huge 12 to 15 acres, with a dam, hills, gullys, trees, muddy patches and streams, so there was a fair amount of stuff to expose her to.
First we headed out down to the dam - she moves so nicely, just goes forward lovely. It is hard not to pull her back, because she feels like she is running away sometimes, and she is young, so it takes a bit not to panic and pull her up, but her forward walk is something alot of horse people take years to build to, so I don't want to ruin it. We got to a muddy / boggy patch and she sniffed it and went through, we got to the dam and turned to go through some more muddy areas, and got to a stream. First she wanted to just look at it, then she tried to go around it, and I just kept pointing her towards it and asking for her to go through, and she just popped over it, not a silly cat leap like alot of horses, but a nice little first jump. Then we headed back up towards the gate, down a hill and through a gully with another stream at the base, again she questioned my intent when I asked her to go over, but when I said, yep this is what I want, she popped over again. I then set out up a hill asked her to trot up it, and she was happy to do so, she stopped a couple of times, but I just asked her to keep going and she did. By this time we had been hacking around for about 20 mins, and it was time to go. What a first ride!!! I was beaming from ear to ear, she was nice and calm the whole time, she is an awesome little horse!
Headed back up to the house for a bite to eat, and then went onto Rocky. After my ride and after Rockys good performance yesterday, I was pretty excited to see what today would bring. I headed down there, and Rocky was the first one to come and say hello. I had already fed them this morning, so I just grabbed the gear, put the rope hackamore on him, saddled him, and started the ground skills. He was very responsive again today, so I just turned him a few times, did some circles, backed him up, yielded the hind and forequarters, and tested his tail. All was good so I decided to hop on. I was out in the bigger section of the dairy yards, and I just started doing some long lines of walk, turning at each end, and maintaining gait and direction. He was getting this pretty good, so I headed down to the yards, which is down a slight slope, then up over a log and up a slight slope, just hacking around. I started to try and build a trot, and he did quicken his pace a little but we didn't quite get the trot. This boy is a different kettle of fish to Squizzy - he really is a bit lazy and has to be asked to go forward often, and continually reminded to continue. So I decided to take him back out of the yards and into the bigger paddock, I asked him to trot out there, and he tried but didn't quite make it. I took him to the end of the paddock, and asked him to trot towards the back of the dairy, he picked up a trot and kept going. Yes! I rode the trot (rising) all the way to the yards, gave him a rub, and hopped off. He really tried for me, so I am happy to leave it there.
Looking forward to tomorrow!
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