Ears is on a slow fitness programme, as is befitting a 21 year old aristoctratic old lady, which includes two days riding a week and two days lunging. How she behaves when lunging on any given day is entirely up to her. Some days she has the lunge line clipped on and sets off at a trot which she continues through commands of walk, stand (or canter or gallop) until you haul her in or she decides to stop. Other days she does exactly what she is told when she is told to do it. Sometimes we put poles on the ground or a small jump out to lunge her over, sometimes she says "Oh what fun". Sometimes she says "Oh my god what on earth is that horse eating thing on the ground" and leaps sideways before whatever it is gets her. Sometimes when I laugh she decides that she might just behave herself, sometimes not.
Riding sessions are a little more disciplined - she really knows better than to misbehave under saddle, though some days the moaning she manages to do while trotting would convince you that she is dying if you didn't know better.
She also nearly got me with the pink mounting block.
Not being as agile as I used to be I generally climb on board using some method of elevating myself closer to horse height. For quite a while it was either the side of the yards or an upturned water trough (or sometimes the side of a concrete water trough but really that was asking to go swimming) Then recently I saw and purchased a rather vivid pink mounting block, three heavy duty plastic steps, easy to pull round and being such a bright colour difficult to lose in long grass. I was very pleased with it when I positioned Ears alongside and climbed the steps to find that I was at a great height for ease of sliding into the saddle. The old girl of course had a plan. At the moment that I had a leg half over her she looked round, pretended she had just realised that the pink thing beside her was close enough to attack her fetlocks, and leapt sideways. I didn't fall off - but it wasn't pretty. She probably laughed, I did when I had both feet in stirrups and felt relatively secure again.
Anyway tonight she had a lunging session - and was a good girl. So she was put back out on a new bit of grass on the other side of the hot wire from Roxy and Tee for half an hour before they were allowed in with her. They were somewhat agog that she had all that nice green stuff and they didn't have any and stood as close as possible to the wire looking on wistfully. Now a dear old biddy who had in truth been a little short on food all day would put her head down and start eating wouldn't she? Not Ears, she spent twenty minutes cantering up and down, kicking up her heels and totally showing off to the other two that she had managed to get the best deal.
No comments:
Post a Comment