training at the beach

As you can probably tell from my lack of posts I have been super busy, translation = not doing much with the horses. I have even taken rugs off all of them and they are currently all 'roughing' it - i think they enjoy it! Phil asked me out on a beach ride the other day and having not ridden anyone for ages, i thought - ill take squizzy! The little quarter pony that I have only just started, then put back in the paddock to 'be a horse' again for a while.

Sounds like a dumb idea right? Well, it probably wasn't the smartest thing that i ever did - take a young, green horse to the beach, but I really wanted to see how she would cope - and boy was I impressed. Despite her being super scared of the water, the sand, the wet sand, the dry sand, the grass (you get the idea) she really held it together, we had one little moment of a kick up and a snort - and another where we got surrounded by 'monsters' (twig monsters, sand monsters, grass monsters....) where i decided for both of our benefits I would hop off and lead her through, and that was really it - she actually is a brave little filly, who has been deeper in the water than some of my other horses I have taken to the beach a number of times. Even though she was scared - her way of dealing with being scared was to go up to things and investigate, not turn and run. So in the end we ended up walking along the beach (behind al - phils old quarter horse) and we were doing alright. We need to get back there again, but I was sooo happy with her attitude and response to pressure - at least now I know I can afford to expose her to some pressure and she is going to try and cope,

happy horsing

tk