Spooky Ace

I took Ace out for a hack and he is almost as bad as Jazz was at his age for spooking. His evasions are less violent, but he can be equally stupid. Today it was sheep. You would never guess that he spends his life in a field which is surrounded on all 4 sides by the smelly white creatures!  He turned tail and tried to flee for home when he spotted one moving in a field we were approaching. When I stopped him turning for home, he bucked, which is not my idea of fun on a road :-(   I got off twice and led him down the hill he was making a fuss about before he would consent to be ridden down it instead. He was also nervous of his own shadow for the whole ride, which was unfortunate since it was another FABULOUS day with bright sunshine and VERY clear shadows!

Jazz was a good boy and we had a very nice, unchallenging undemanding session. Medium trot (extended wasn't on offer today and I did not push it) and some lovely slow balanced canter and some sharp flying changes after a 15m circle back to the track.  Mummy's gooooood boy!

Radar. Oh boy. I only wanted to give him some exercise so I don't need to ride him tomorrow and can have the day with SH when he gets back from a short trip away. Forty minutes later he was still unable to trot a figure of eight without throwing himself around the arena :-(   I tried holding him back (he went completely stiff), I tried sending him on (he bolted), I tried leaving him to do what he wanted (he got faster and faster like we were in a centrifuge).  In the end I let him go as fast as he liked, rode the wall of death and kept changing reins until he worked out how incredibly hard work that was, dropped into an outline and came back to a slow trot.

I thought we'd have a little canter to finish and he bolted into each transition. I know the answer to this one now is not to try and hold him together. So I did one transition after another, pulling up if he bolted off, until he chose to step calmly into canter and do a circle without attempting to dislocate my arms. It worked really quickly this time.

So he's had a darned good workout, as well as doing some work that will hopefully make it easier to control him when we next hunt, which is not this Saturday unfortunately - too far away.

C