Saturday silliness!

We were lucky enough to have gorgeous weather once again on the day that we decided to go for a hack to the same local stables as we did last Friday (which you can read about here) This time we took Nelli and Basse, and they were so well behaved that we even managed to go crazy enough to have a small bit of cantering!!! 

Since Nelli had already been there last week, she was so much more relaxed this time. As soon as we took her out of the trailer and she saw where we were, she was calm and waiting to be tacked up. Basse was another story... He was unbelievably excited to be going to a new place, although luckily he was able to keep himself in check and stay nearly normal. We just had to do lots of walking in hand before he would stand still long enough for us to tack him up. Once I'd gotten on him, he stood still like an angel; but after we started riding towards the track that's when he started to get a bit antsy. It was like riding a fire snorting dragon, he wasn't able to walk properly so we piaffe-passage-trot-walked for the first five minutes. Apparently it was too much hard work, and he managed to start walking like a normal horse after that. Silly over-excited boy!

After a couple of rounds of walk, we started trotting and boy have I ever had to work so hard to do continuous half-halting in order to keep Basse for bursting at the seams... I was pleasantly surprised to see how fit he was, even after two rounds of trotting, when we changed direction all the small cross country jumps at the side of the track became incredibly scary because they'd changed sides, and thus were obviously alive and coming out to eat horses... Even the hare in the field close by was something worthy of spooking at! 

Ponies in the trailer on the way back :)

Hopefully we can visit this place again soon, next time I'm determined to take either Rama or Vallu (mum still isn't keen on this idea) I find hacking out incredibly relaxing, and so much fun to let the horses go fast, and have some fun in the middle of the woods in the sunshine.