Freedom

Freedom to be you. Freedom to be what you want. Freedom to be who you want to be. Freedom to travel through life and learn it's lessons. 

Thanks to the wind and horrible weather today, I decided a ride was off the cards. Not because I was worried about Rio being a numpty, but because he's been so good recently and I keep on saying that I'm going to do some groundwork with him and haven't. This seemed the perfect opportunity. It was also a great chance to trial his new sports boots! He's getting to be a right posh-boy. We did some in-hand work and getting him to stay out of my space. He did some trotting work but was only on his regular lead rope so it was quite small circles around me. That said, he settled very quickly, and was soon trotting with his neck stretched beautifully and nose to the ground. Lush. 

I thought he might enjoy a chance for a prance on his own whilst I had a chat at the gate with Sarah, so I let him off the lead rope, but he just wasn't interested. When I ran around the school, however, he loved it and happily followed! So we went back to working, and had a couple of cones set up as a stop start box. The idea being that we would walk or trot to the cones, and stop or go down to walk as we went through them. It only worked! We even managed a couple of steps backwards after halting in the cones. So proud. 

Check him out! 5 minutes in his stable having his dinner this evening. With the door shut! I left him to it, and listened out for the tell tale sound of him sizing up the door to jump it, before I intervened. He didn't barge out of the stable when I opened the door, and had even had a bit of a munch on his haynet. Now tell me that the Alfa A hadn't been addling his brain at all? Is this really my boy?

We've been having such windy days recently, so Rio's hay has been at risk of being blown away. I've resorted to weighting it down with a tyre for now,but I'm hoping my lovely hubby might build me a pallet hay manger of some sort - will keep you updated! 

Ride / play safe x