Out and about

I had such a good hack yesterday :) Unfortunately there's nowhere nearby to go offroad so we always have to do lots of road work on our hacks. She's fine with traffic and the drivers are generally very good so it's not much of an issue. She does like to gawp at peoples' gardens etc though which is quite embarrassing :)

We've hacked out about 4 times on our own and so far she's been pretty great. No unnecessary spooking (the crunchy leaf spook was entirely necessary). We went a different way to normal and went to a little park thing with a bridle path in it. It's tiny, takes about 5mins to walk around the whole thing. Anyway it was completely empty so we had a couple of good fast canters across the grass and she was loving it! It's the first time I've opened her up in ages and she really seemed to enjoy it. It made me realise how great her brakes are too. I didn't struggle to pull her up one bit.

We then went down a bit of the road we've never been down before and she was great aside from oggling a poor defenseless gardener. Got home and I was buzzing from how good she had been and the fact that I now have a pony who hacks alone! It means we can spend a bit less time in the school now so she doesn't go stale.

I got home and got an email off someone about a hound exercise run with the north east cheshire drag hunt this saturday. The kennels are a 45min hack away on a route we've been multiple times (never alone but it can't be too different..right?). I called the hunt master's wife and she was really nice. Apparently it's a fairly slow-paced hack out for a couple of hours followed by lunch at the kennels. It should be good to get her used to riding in such a big group and with the hounds etc without having to worry about charging through the countryside :) Sooo excited!! Will hopefully refresh her in time for the show on sunday too. Eeeeee :D