Three play days

I'm very lucky to have had three separate play days with three different pony/horse friends within the last couple of weeks. My first was with Lara, a huge apolosa belonging to Mums friend Trish. I was invited to go down and play in their indoor school.  So Mum took me in the box on wheels to Lara's house. Once there I was tacked up and met Lara for the first time, when I say huge I mean so tall I could probably walk under her tummy. We both had a walk, trot and canter in her house and then Mum swapped with Trish. I was a bit worried about this as Mum gets vertigo and she was mighty high up, but it's ok she stayed on. I concentrated very hard and made sure I represented the fun pony side of us Dales ponies and gave Trish an enjoyable ride. 

Mum was squealing with enjoyment riding a 'real' dressage horse, and loved charging across the diagonals in medium trot. OMG I would need to do a flat out gallop to keep up with that trot! I hope Mum doesn't get any fancy ideas!  Riders swapped back while we played at canter transitions. This was a bit of an interesting experiment with Mum riding the transitions with her eyes closed 'guessing' whether I had got the correct leading leg or not. I think more practice is needed!

Trish loved riding me so much we swapped back again and then went for a cool down hack along the lane. Mum are you ok up there, from her smile I'm guessing yes. 

Trish took the compulsory pony hacking picture, it's a good thing I had washed behind my ears!

As if that wasn't enough fun my second play day on Sunday meant I got to take Cousin Eric out for a hack around one of my favourite rides at Barbury and around Rockley. This is a bit more complicated as we have to use Eric's box on wheels but we were soon loaded up and driving up to Barbury. Benji got to come too, he loves this ride as its over 8 miles long and it's all off road so he just gets to run and run and run. Eric and Jo enjoyed the ride and we were so lucky, because it just started to rain as we got back to the box on wheels. It was a lot of hill work but Jo has been working hard with Eric and he's now fit enough to do these fun rides. We did lots of racing and had fabulous views. The best thing was Eric and I were supposed to be doing a circle competition that day but it had been cancelled. The humans weren't happy about this but we much preffered running around the hills. Thank you cousin Eric for a great day and Jo for keeping Mum company. 

I'm so lucky after a play day on Sunday Mum took me out for another play day on Monday, with my Highland pony friend Iona. I really like going to her house, it's very relaxing, I wish I could live over there.  When we arrived I had a room all made out for me, so I settled in and put my hooves up while Mum helped Caroline and Hugh put up some jumps. Finally I was tacked up and we went jumping. I did do a couple of stops but once I got the hang of it I was flying around.  Iona was flying too. 

At the end of the session we did the barrel challenge. We had been jumping three barrels in a row, for the challenge two of the barrels are removed and we have to be super accurate and just jump one dead in the middle. This is quite tricky.  I could feel Mum concentrating very hard and on the first attempt she lined me up dead centre, agrhhhh, I'm going to have to jump this, hmmmmm what evasion tactics can I use, oh yes the mid air swivel, as you can see I might still need to do some more work on this manoeuvre as I still ended up having to kinda jump the jump. It's a very hard manoeuvre that uses a lot of energy. 

So I thought better of trying that on my second attempt and went for a proper jump instead. Hair flying everywhere, I think I'm looking good, kept those front feet tucked up nice and tight. 

Thank you to all my pony friends, Lara, Eric and Iona for inviting me to come play with you, I had lots of fun and hope we can play again soon. I'm tired now, maybe Mum can go to work so I can have a rest.