No, not the horses, me! But up until yesterday we'd had a rather good week...
On Tuesday morning I thought I'd better see if the stand still for mounting lesson had translated successfully, so off we went to the road where Finn duly stood like a pony-shaped boulder for me to get on and was rewarded with a bit of carrot fed from the saddle. I rode off down the road feeling rather chuffed with my l33t p0ny sch001ing ski11z, only for him to grind to a halt 10 yards later and look round going 'Oi! More carrot!' I asked him to walk on, he started nibbling my boot!
Twenty minutes later I'd tried waiting him out, flapping reins and legs, growling, slapping my whip on my boot, waving it around his backside...and we'd got another 70 yards down the road, at which point he decided if he wasn't getting any more carrot he was going home and turned round. At that point he got a smack on the bum and told to effing well get on with it - and he was a total angel for the rest of the hack!
Having won that battle, I'd hoped for an easier time on Thursday morning, but he'd decided that the turning round and heading for home trick was one he wanted to repeat and tried it every minute or so for the first quarter of a mile, so we waltzed down the village in a series of small circles until he got to a manhole cover that he's walked past at least eight times before without noticing and decided that it was a pony-eating dragon that I needed protecting from and therefore he was taking me home. I'd planned to take him out of the village and a little way up the main road, but didn't think it was particularly safe to be circling my way up a road where logging lorries come down the hill at 60mp, no matter how much high viz stuff I was wearing, so after I'd got a reasonably sensible five minutes out of him, I turned him round. And, you guessed it, perfect hacking pony all the way home, until he realised that I was going to make him walk past our drive. He tried a half-hearted dive to each side, got a strong leg and a growl and then gave in, so I rode him down to the road fork, gave him another bit of carrot and then went home.
The weather forecast is great for this week and I was hoping to ride at least three times, but yesterday rather put paid to that idea. My husband stuck his head round the office door mid-morning to say that the breeze had dropped and the midges were horrendous, so I picked up the fly sheets and headed out to the field. I'd done Merlin's and was just finishing up with Finn, who was standing at the small gate between us and the neighbour's field. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Merlin stalking up the field with his "I'm going to bite the pony on his arse" face on. What I should have done was left the last strap on the neck cover, chased Merlin off and then gone back and done it up, but I thought I had time to get the strap done and then jump out of the way. Wrong. Horse teeth met pony bottom and Finn's only exit route was through me. He barged past, knocking me over onto the stone dyke wall and then trod on my foot, which was sideways on the ground rather than flat.
By 3pm yesterday afternoon it was hurting like you wouldn't believe and alternating between nearly numb and almost pins and needles, so I took myself down to the surgery where they pronounced it probably not broken. I'm hobbling around the place with the assistance of a wooden staff and swearing a lot! I'm guessing that's the running knocked on the head for a few weeks - I'd just started really getting going with it again - but since it's the right foot, I may be able to scramble back into the saddle by the end of the week.
Showing posts with label napping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label napping. Show all posts
Tuesday, 4 September 2012
Friday, 10 June 2011
Pushing the edges of confidence
At the bottom of our fields is a beach. It's half a mile of golden sand and there's rarely anyone on it. For a few weeks now I've been looking at it and thinking that I really should start riding on it, but I've wimped out every single time.
Tuesday it rained, so I didn't ride. Wednesday was gorgeous, but I was off into town to visit the waxing salon and let's just say that certain bits of me were too sensitive to even THINK about riding! Thursday I just plain wimped out to the point where I spent the afternoon in my pyjamas on the sofa eating chocolate and shivering.
So when the sun beamed down on me this morning I got my gung-ho head on and after giving Merlin an hour to digest his very tiny breakfast of a handful of soaked beet and a tennis-ball sized handful of chaff, I went down to the field to catch him.
He clocked the jods and boots and had other ideas. Five minutes of unscheduled loose schooling later he decided that cantering round the field was harder work than being caught and let me stick his headcollar on in return for a bit of carrot. He perked up when we didn't take our normal route to the school next door but went through the back garden, through the gate separating our house from the croft on the other side (before we had our own drive, the only access to our house was down their driveway and we still have a right of way) and then down through the fields to the gate at the bottom.
He'd behaved extremely well up to that point, but while I was re-tying the gate he gave me a massive head-butt, my arm jerked and I got a really deep scratch on my finger from the barbed wire strands wrapped round the gatepost. Bleeding quite hard, I led him down the quad tracks to the seat made out of a plank nailed to two old buoys I was going to use as a mounting block. And he was a prat. Swung out, wouldn't stand near it, stepped over it, turned his back on it, tried to graze round it - I had my schooling whip with me and even tapping him over wasn't working. Eventually he got close enough for me to give it a go and I hopped on.
Before I had a chance to pick up my reins, he turned round and power-walked off in the direction we'd come from, away from the beach. I got him to halt, but when I tried to turn him back round he stuck his head in the air, napped and then carried on in the opposite direction to the one I wanted to go in. So I thought I'd go with it, carried on riding him up the path by the stream and for a minute or so it was all quite relaxed until he realised he'd missed the quad tracks and had gone past the field. He stopped and spun, leaving me hanging out sideways with my head far closer to his knees than his ears and about 50:50 odds between being able to get back into the saddle or sliding in an inelegant heap to the ground.
Managed to sit back up (yay!) and as soon as he felt me get my balance back he trotted back down the path. I got him to walk and to stay on the path rather than cutting straight across the meadow as it's riddled with rabbit holes. He spotted the quad tracks from this direction and headed up them. I made him stop and got him to turn. He battled me and turned back again and we yo-yo'd up and down the path with his stride getting shorter and shorter and his head going ever more skywards until he grabbed hold of his bit and essentially ran away with me in walk - VERY embarrassing!
He stood at the gate looking round at me with the smuggest expression on his face and 'what are you going to do about THAT?' ears. If I'd been the confident rider I was years ago, I'd have hauled him round, given him a smack and booted him all the way back down the path to the beach. As my brain was going OhShitOhShitOhShit, all I managed to do was turn him round again and make him walk a few steps away from the gate before jumping off.
At this point he thought he'd won. Nope. The reins went over his head and we did the hack I'd intended to do on horseback in hand instead. He was marched round the beach for 20 minutes and then marched back up the hill, past his field (I'd got angry by this point!) and straight into the neighbours' school. The look on his face was a picture!
He wasn't too much of a pain with the mounting block and I told myself if I rode two circuits on each rein, in walk, that would be enough to settle my nerves and my brain would remember it as finishing on a good experience. And guess what? He was as good as gold.
So, lessons to be learnt from today? Well, I think I tried to take too big a step. I should have tried hacking him around the top two fields rather than going straight to the beach - if he'd napped there, which he probably would have, I'd have been happier giving him a boot because there was only about an acre and a bit of space for him to bugger about in rather than half a mile of open sand and my neighbour was doing her garden so was within earshot if anything disasterous happened. But even three months ago I would have jumped off straight after the spin rather than carrying on trying to sort the issue and I certainly wouldn't have got back on in the school. I'd have left it, cried my eyes out and probably not ridden again for another six months. So there are definite improvements, I just have to remember not to try and canter before I can walk, as it were.
Tuesday it rained, so I didn't ride. Wednesday was gorgeous, but I was off into town to visit the waxing salon and let's just say that certain bits of me were too sensitive to even THINK about riding! Thursday I just plain wimped out to the point where I spent the afternoon in my pyjamas on the sofa eating chocolate and shivering.
So when the sun beamed down on me this morning I got my gung-ho head on and after giving Merlin an hour to digest his very tiny breakfast of a handful of soaked beet and a tennis-ball sized handful of chaff, I went down to the field to catch him.
He clocked the jods and boots and had other ideas. Five minutes of unscheduled loose schooling later he decided that cantering round the field was harder work than being caught and let me stick his headcollar on in return for a bit of carrot. He perked up when we didn't take our normal route to the school next door but went through the back garden, through the gate separating our house from the croft on the other side (before we had our own drive, the only access to our house was down their driveway and we still have a right of way) and then down through the fields to the gate at the bottom.
He'd behaved extremely well up to that point, but while I was re-tying the gate he gave me a massive head-butt, my arm jerked and I got a really deep scratch on my finger from the barbed wire strands wrapped round the gatepost. Bleeding quite hard, I led him down the quad tracks to the seat made out of a plank nailed to two old buoys I was going to use as a mounting block. And he was a prat. Swung out, wouldn't stand near it, stepped over it, turned his back on it, tried to graze round it - I had my schooling whip with me and even tapping him over wasn't working. Eventually he got close enough for me to give it a go and I hopped on.
Before I had a chance to pick up my reins, he turned round and power-walked off in the direction we'd come from, away from the beach. I got him to halt, but when I tried to turn him back round he stuck his head in the air, napped and then carried on in the opposite direction to the one I wanted to go in. So I thought I'd go with it, carried on riding him up the path by the stream and for a minute or so it was all quite relaxed until he realised he'd missed the quad tracks and had gone past the field. He stopped and spun, leaving me hanging out sideways with my head far closer to his knees than his ears and about 50:50 odds between being able to get back into the saddle or sliding in an inelegant heap to the ground.
Managed to sit back up (yay!) and as soon as he felt me get my balance back he trotted back down the path. I got him to walk and to stay on the path rather than cutting straight across the meadow as it's riddled with rabbit holes. He spotted the quad tracks from this direction and headed up them. I made him stop and got him to turn. He battled me and turned back again and we yo-yo'd up and down the path with his stride getting shorter and shorter and his head going ever more skywards until he grabbed hold of his bit and essentially ran away with me in walk - VERY embarrassing!
He stood at the gate looking round at me with the smuggest expression on his face and 'what are you going to do about THAT?' ears. If I'd been the confident rider I was years ago, I'd have hauled him round, given him a smack and booted him all the way back down the path to the beach. As my brain was going OhShitOhShitOhShit, all I managed to do was turn him round again and make him walk a few steps away from the gate before jumping off.
At this point he thought he'd won. Nope. The reins went over his head and we did the hack I'd intended to do on horseback in hand instead. He was marched round the beach for 20 minutes and then marched back up the hill, past his field (I'd got angry by this point!) and straight into the neighbours' school. The look on his face was a picture!
He wasn't too much of a pain with the mounting block and I told myself if I rode two circuits on each rein, in walk, that would be enough to settle my nerves and my brain would remember it as finishing on a good experience. And guess what? He was as good as gold.
So, lessons to be learnt from today? Well, I think I tried to take too big a step. I should have tried hacking him around the top two fields rather than going straight to the beach - if he'd napped there, which he probably would have, I'd have been happier giving him a boot because there was only about an acre and a bit of space for him to bugger about in rather than half a mile of open sand and my neighbour was doing her garden so was within earshot if anything disasterous happened. But even three months ago I would have jumped off straight after the spin rather than carrying on trying to sort the issue and I certainly wouldn't have got back on in the school. I'd have left it, cried my eyes out and probably not ridden again for another six months. So there are definite improvements, I just have to remember not to try and canter before I can walk, as it were.
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