Another useful day

[glenatron]

Today Zorro and I went out on our first solo hack after a somewhat disastrous endeavour a couple of months ago which ended in a full on argument with spinning, rearing and bucking in the middle of the lane. I started off down the hill on the lane, but after a whole bunch of things happened in the first three hundred yards or so ( car coming round the corner too fast, another car faffing around behind us and a big noisy tractor cutting hay in the field by the road ) and I could feel him starting to boil over a little so I turned us around and we headed off up the trail at the top of the lane instead. We had a bit of trouble getting any kind of forward momentum because he doesn't really agree with riding out alone and then there were cows which he has never seen apart from the ones across the valley from his field but those are either small or far away whereas these ones were either big or near. Having stopped boggling in astonishment at the magnitude of bovines we headed on up to the gate onto the local nature reserve. I've never ridden Zorro through a gate before but after a bit of confusion on his part and wild leaning on mine we got the (rider friendly) gate open and scooted through it. We did a very short loop coming back another gate on a nearby trail, which was harder to do- Zorro maneuvered up beside it like an old pro but when I got the gate open and asked him to back up I couldn't work out how to get a turn at the same time so we backed up and I couldn't hold onto the gate and stay on the pony. We went forward again and once I had the catch open and tried the back-up again Zorro clearly figured out what I was trying to do, nudged it open with his nose and through we went. Once again, I have a good and clever pony.

It was a fairly intense ride and pretty inconsistent in terms of going forward ( we quickly found our impulsion on the way home ) but I'm very pleased with what I got there, Zorro has proven himself to be clever and generous and willing twice in a row and that means a whole lot.

Comments

[evil-c.livejournal.com]

Congrats on getting out and about as a single pony! Zorro is clearly better at opening gates than you are, you should leave it to him in future :D

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

Yes, almost too good at opening gates, in some respects. He's been caught very close to having opened the gate to his field a few weeks back...

[wldhrsjen3.livejournal.com]

Yay for Zorro being so willing and good for you for being brave. Just watch that tendency to get rushy on the way home. That can turn into a Very Frustrating Habit very, very quickly with some horses.

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

The way I see it, the more we rush home the better the chance we'll rush straight past the gate and continue our adventures elsewhere...

[penella22.livejournal.com]

Sounds like good experiences all the way around. I've heard one of the old horseman's tricks with a gate is to bring your horse up alongside it and just pet the gate so the horse finds it comfortable and un-intimidating. Sounds like Zorro had no need for such things though...maybe you need to pet the cows instead. :P

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

But in spite of living in a field with cows just across a small valley for him he has never seen cows in his life before. It's understandable that he's anxious.

[ownedbyhorses.livejournal.com]

But those cows in his neighboring pasture stay in that pasture. These cows were some place they should not be! LOL!

Have you ever seen a cat walk into the bathroom and see a towel that has been put on the floor for the first time? The way they approach it like it's going to spring up and grab them is very funny.

Who knows what those cows were planning...?

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

Some of the small ones were planning on running along the top of the field. There was a brief moment when I thought we might be going with them, but I kept breathing and we stayed calm...

[half-a-cider.livejournal.com]

"nudged it open with his nose and through we went"

Zorro: Dude, just let me do it, geessh!