Honey's Adventure!

Today despite the temperature, me and Simone headed out to my paddock. I had told her that I had a big plan in mind and when we were in the car I let her know of it - I was gonna take Honey out on the road. With our upcoming show several weeks away, I've decided that if I don't start leaving my paddock and throwing Honey into new situations, then I'm going to struggle a bit at Green Horse. But as much as I just would like to do stuff, I have to push myself to the limit I'm comfortable with. I have no interest in riding down a beach or in a forest - I've never done it, and my curiosity has never sparked enough to do it now. I know however that it's good experience for horses to do these things, give them more confidence in their work at home. So I knew I had to do something and since I'm going to be riding to the pony club to use the arena over winter this year, I thought we ought to tackle this first.

I was gonna take her for a walk inhand first to get her used to leaving the paddock - she hasn't since August last year when I got her. But I just never got around to it, so after warming up (she proceeded to race a bit but I slowed her down), I got Simone to chuck us on a lead and with me keeping my nerves down as much as I could, we left my paddock and headed to the front gate. All went well until we got out onto the gravel. Surely she must have seen gravel before in her life, but apparently she just couldn't figure out why it was moving and making noises under her feet. She was watching it so intently, and I just remained calm, she wasn't doing anything - infact she didn't do anything at all. We got to the bridge and she kicked a stone onto it... watched it skittle across the wood and flipped out... tensed right up, snorted "fire" and refused to step onto it. With encouragement she stepped on and crossed it... but then she was back onto that horrible gravel again lol. Basically she reacted so much, more than I expected. But she wasn't bad about it... she stretched and had a look at everything, trembled a couple of times and by the time we reached the rail tracks I figured she had handled enough without exploding. We turned back and crossed that horrible bridge with a bit more speed (haha) and then once we were back in the paddock again it was like she could breathe again, poor girl. I knew I was more relaxed than she was, I remained as calm as I could, checked my heart rate often etc. My baby horse has finally been faced with something that's thrown her off... and all she did was tense up and tremble! I was so proud of her. Once back in the main paddock, I asked Simone to unclip us and walked her by myself around and she couldnt care less... so working at home now seems easy to her compared to the big adventure out. It was successful and we'll be doing it again soon.

As for Simone, she rode Miss Bailey today in front of her Grandma... it went super well... although we had to shift her saddle as shes so big that it slipped forward. But Simone did incredibly well and I'm so very proud of her! Bailey decided to be naughty at one point but then had a "oh its just easier to do it isn't it?" moment and got on with things - yay!

So it's super hot, and I've got a headache from being out in the sun... but what a brilliant day and I can't wait to work with Honey tomorrow and see how today's venture out impacts our session together!

Signing off!

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