Friday, May 09, 2008

Still feeling great but we do napping...

Rode last night and she felt great physically but now we're starting to do napping. Sigh.. it's so not ideal to be trying to hack her out on her own but I'm so stuck because there's no one else to ride out with and our field has waist high grass in it at the moment, waiting to be cut for haylage. She's not uncontrollable when she naps. It's just planting, backing up and refusing to go forward at certain points and we're having the discussion every time and I'm making her go on a little bit then praising her for it. Last night she napped right down at the bottom of a neighbouring lane - just decided she wouldn't go any further - I think because she'd seen the traffic on the road another 100m on and was worried we were going into the traffic. So we had a discussion, with her planting, trying to back up and spin round and me backing her up in the opposite direction, circling her, bumping her forwards and sideways. She also threatened to jump down the ditch at the side of the road until I said 'well, fill your boots. Jump in the ditch then' and she put one foot off the edge, thought better of it and hopped back on to the lane. She's such a clever minx! She works out when you're worried about her doing something and then goes for it to try and distract you from what you are trying to get her to do. But she has a better survival instinct than to really chuck herself in the ditch. Obviously, if we had been really risking a wreck I wouldn't have called her bluff on it but she could have hopped into and out of this ditch quite easily without hurting herself. But AGH! for a hacking partner. :-/ She did finally walk on after a 10 minute interlude and then after 10m I stopped her, gave her loads of praise and scratches and waited until her head dropped and she sighed and then we turned back home.

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