Today it was super warm weather and I couldn’t pass up to opportunity to go out hacking in the fields. Bella was actually okay to catch today, although she didn’t seem happy about it. I also mounted on her in a different place to which she was much better at rather than messing about the mounting block in the school.

Once on I found that she was pretty wary of everything and jumping at every noise. I didn’t know whether this was because she was nervous, or if she was sensing my nerves as I still don’t have complete trust in her yet as I’ve only ridden her a few times on my own now. However I still was going to try and get a little work in and so began to use my thigh muscles and occasionally made her halt just using my seat like we did in my lesson which worked, however she did seem a little distracted.

After our little canter she was quite buzzed and was rushing a lot in the walk, we came down this big concrete hill and she wasn’t too happy about that either. Instantly her body went crooked and she veered to the right trying to get to the grass verge. To push her back over I used my right leg and just pushed her bum over a little bit to straighten her up which worked but only temporarily, I pretty much had to have my leg on the entire way down the hill. Another thing she didn’t like was going slow, because I was making her go slow. In the past her owner has just allowed her to march in the walk, and its so fast sometimes it might as well be a little trot. To try and make her slow down I used my seat and clenched all my tummy muscles – I think! – and stopped allowing my body to move with her and blocking the movement. This did work to a point but she was pretty frustrated. So you can imagine how worked up she was getting going down this hill with me forcing her bum over and slowing her down. We finally got to the bottom but it took what felt like forever! There were some moments when I thought all the aids were a little too much or she wanted a longer rein as she stopped and began to go backwards at some moments. Clearly we need to go down more hills in the summer!

I felt really bad when we got home as she had worked herself into such a sweat just from mostly walking, but it was still a nice change that to being in the school, worrying less about my position and hers and trying to relax a little and get to know her better. I can’t wait for our bond to grow so that I can gallop her comfortably, and so it just gives me more to look forward to this summer as today seemed liked a taste of what is to come. Just need to get all this uni work done and out the way!