Wednesday 4th February

Today we went to the beach!! W have been planning to go for a while but the weather has never been good enough, so today it was cold but it was dry so we decided to go. When we first thought about going to the beach I decided I would take Smarty as I know I would be able to ride him along the beach and have some fun with him, but today after talking to Eddy about which pony I should take he thought it would be better for me to take Blossom. As the way he sees it is Blossom is the one I need help with, so it would be good to take her somewhere new and if I had any problems he would be there to help me.

Well the start didn’t go to well as Blossom didn’t want to load, she will canter into the trailer when it is in the arena and sometimes I spend a lot of our play session trying to keep her out of the trailer. But as soon as you park it outside and she knows we are going somewhere she doesn’t want to go in, how strange!! Eddy ended up loading her for me and this was interesting to watch as he was very firm with her and really did go through his phases with her. I always feel now that if she doesn’t want to load it is because she is scared when Eddy says she is now being more dominant about not going in because she doesn’t want to leave her friends. Interesting, think I need to remember to always read the horse that shows up on the day, instead of just assuming she is scared/dominant because that is how she used to be

Our ride on the beach went really well, we all started with playing on line to get our horses warmed up and their focus on us and once we felt ready we could then mount up. Once mounted I started with riding circles as this is a pattern Blossom now knows and relaxes on, it was really good doing this on the beach as you could see where you have ridden so you could see if you were actually riding a circle and if you were able to stay on that circle without making it bigger or smaller. We played with this for quite a bit in walk, trot and canter, and she was really good and very relaxed.

Once everyone had been riding for a while and all the horses where safe and relaxed we all went for a walk along the beach. Blossom was calm and relaxed all the way along and we even went paddling in some water. But once we turned round and headed back she got a little more excited and to save me from having to fight her, I was to put her behind Eddy’s horse and all I was to do was to steer her so she stayed right behind and Eddy used is CS to keep Blossom out his horses space. It was interesting as doing this it then made it Blossom responsibility to stay behind or she was therefore running into the pressure of the CS herself.

Overall it was a really good day and Blossom getting a little impulsive at the end wasn’t really that bad, and was actually still quite controlled impulsiveness for Blossom. But what I did also find really interesting is that Eddy’s horse also became impulsive at points, I didn’t expect this as I have only ever see him in the arena and he is always so well behaved. So when Eddy’s horse did get impulsive I watched to see what Eddy done to relax him again and most of the time he used strategies he has already shown me to use on Blossom and he also put his horse behind Marieke’s horse and done the same exercise as I had done with him. So a really good day!!