Wild thing!

I must admit that whilst Vallu can be such a lovely honest boy to ride, he can also be a hysterical 🍆 some days (but I love him anyway!). On Saturday we had a beautiful warm up, doing a big relaxed trot around the arena and he was so good that even my mother went "WOW". Should have stopped after my warm up because it just went downhill from there!

Went up into canter - nice and soft. And then he juuuust started to slyly stop concentrating, I stupidly took my foot off the accelerator at the scary spots by the door and the mirrors, which I payed for massively with a ridiculous amount of spooks, leaps and jumps. 😑 Also had a good snake rodeo when I asked him to canter and he saw the hoof prints of a horse doing steps back (cos you know these are terrifying compared to normal hoof steps in the sand!) which thank goodness came to a stop when I rode him into the wall...🌪💥  I made him trot and canter over the hoof marks several times and I hope that I nicely knocked that one on the head!

He then just piaffe'd constantly. Like for a good 5 minutes I could get walk and piaffe, no trot or canter. It took a while, a bit of coercing and then a bit growling but in the end we got there 😎 He kept trying of course but it was more half assed couple of steps of being naughty but nothing as dramatic and to be honest in the end it just irritated me rather than worry me! I've also been working on getting myself out of the habit of avoiding the 'scary spots' and so decided to carry on riding the 'circle of terror' by the door and by the mirrors. 😬 Aimed for a nice relaxed trot rather than sitting too still and being a little precious about it, and after repeating that circle about ten times, he was then totally fine. Really chilled! 

Why am I telling you this? Because even the 'perfect' 15 year old schoolmaster isn't perfect, no horse is all the time! I still adore him and wow he can really do a MASSIVE trot when he's running off with me from one end of the arena to the other! I've no doubt he will try it on again at some point, and I've also got no doubt that I will 'win' again.