With the cold wind last night, we decided it would be best to ride indoors. Its been a long time since we have been in the indoor, so it was not without challenges in the form of imaginary horse eating monsters.
Funny start to it, as I was grooming him, we had the music playing. I took a lot of the songs off youtube for the CD I currently have at the barn, and I guess in one of the videos, the first 30 seconds is a walk in the woods? This being sounds of footsteps and birds chirping. It was very convincing because as soon as Bentley heard the footsteps, he became very concerned about how he couldn't see the person walking towards him. Eyes popped out of his head and he moved as far away as the crossties would let him. He had the funniest expression on his face, priceless!
I put the bit on him for the 3rd time, it was difficult again, but it didn't take quite as long as the first time (2nd time must have been a fluke). When we rode however, he was shaking his head a LOT. After about 15 minutes of this, I tried trotting around on the buckle, and all the fussing magically stopped. In fact he was brilliant. I suspect he must be sore in the mouth from the first 2 times, most likely because he has not gotten his teeth done yet. We switched to the bitless bridle, our first time bridling him without the security of the narrow barn aisles (we did it in the arena). I guess its something he has to get used to anyway.
For a while, he was really frustrating to work with in the bitless... trying to run as much as possible and wouldn't stay straight along the one side. I had Lee clear out all the poles and pylons that were in the centre of the ring and started to do circles, figure 8s and serpentines, and voila, magically I had a different horse underneath me. I need to give him things to do, I think he was just bored of the track and frustrated because of our bit experience at the start. In fact, once I really put him to work, he performed the best he ever had in the bitless.
Woah... tangent time. A strange noise from above, i was thinking the air conditioning got turned on or something. I look outside and we got 60 seconds of small but intense hail. While the sun was still shining and no clouds were to be seen. Hm I guess the clouds are on the side of my office without windows. Very weird sight!
Back to my main post. About 15 minutes before I planned on stopping our ride. Someone came and dumped a bucket of water in one corner of the arena. I didn't mind as it was really dusty (hence why it was a short ride, we both were coughing and Lee couldn't see out of his glasses). Bentley sure minded however, he spooked severely at the different colour ground and wouldn't go anywhere near the corner. I spent that last 15 minutes trying to get him near the wet dirt. Eventually we got through it both ways, but not before several of the girls had to pass through the arena and had a good laugh at his antics. Ok those ghostly footsteps are scary, but wet dirt? Come on! Too funny and cute.
No comments:
Post a Comment