Autumn hacking

Two quite interesting things happened today. First of we went for a hack with Magda. It has been a while since we both had time to go for a trail ride with the boys during the day. Now with the time change we will have to hack out in the darkness more often. Today however, we could finally take things slow and the weather was perfect. Both Juliano and Dum were very energetic. We could feel they would just love to gallop and buck but they were very obedient and respected our choices of pace. Juliano was leading and at first Dum was not happy with slow trot but soon he learned that J would not give up the lead and just went with the flow. After a long walk we went down our small cross country road where we allowed the boys to canter and blow off steam. Than trotted deeper into the forest to arrive at a field for a bit of grazing. Juliano spooked a few times but it looked more like he wanted to do something crazy then actual spooking out of fear. He would jump, buck, canter few strides and than stop and turn his head toward me with a face saying "Look how cool that was now give me a treat woman". We both agreed with Magda that with this amount of energy in our horses we would probably have ended in a dead gallop if we had less respect from our horses. So, well done to them for putting their relationship with us before their need to run.

After the hack I took Juliano to the paddock where Marta was playing with Drezyna. I turned J loose and helped Marta with the idea of sideways game. Drezyna was doing great. She was trying so hard and understood the game very quickly. At first we thought she will have problems with her blind side but even though she could not see us she felt our "go sideways" energy very well and when she got confused she would turn her other eye to us. In the meantime Juliano got bored with no one paying attention to him and started showing off. He started putting his feet on the palettes which were scattered around the paddock. He than stood on one and was looking at me if I was watching or not. He is a true rock star and constantly needs to shine. By the way, yesterday Juliano learned sideways towards me which I thought we would never do. So for Drezyna it was the first day of sideways and for Juliano sideways towards a person. One interesting note: even though you thing something is impossible to do, especially with a horse, if you give yourself time and take it slow at first it all falls into place pretty quickly. Just go out there and try it, you will be amazed.