Forest ride

It was so windy today that when I got the float out Garbo started chasing the others. I wonder if it's excitement - he seems to do that quite often when he sees me get the float out (or worse still after getting the float out that I might hater Maraschino first!).

My plan was (for a 12.30pm ride) to play with Maraschino after grooming Garbo, and then leave. Well - I soon realised while grooming Garbo the wind was spooking him alot. His head was high, he couldn't stand still, and when I tried to put him in his yard he tried to jump out when I walked away to get Maraschino - so change of plan!

I realised I needed to actually play with Garbo to calm him down before loading and that I quickly needed him to realise it was ok (because he was with me). So we did some Figure 8! I figured the change of direction would get him thinking again. Then we did some fast circles.!

Luckily over by the float the house was acting as a wind shelter so loading was fine and off we went.

At the beginning of the ride Garbo went off on his own little cross county course - he is so funny.

Garbo was great - at one stage he did try to get in front of Critey, and I did some partial disengagement (if any dressage queens had of seen what we were doing without a bit they would have been green with envy) - Garbo looked amazing - and he calmed down a bit. Then again near the end when the track was really narrow he started trying to bite Critey's bum again so I asked Bronwyn if Critey could perhaps walk faster?? Garbo doesn't like to dawdle! That fixed it! He was happy then. We could hear the wind high in the trees above us but it was calm in there. Nice!

Afterwards he had a big roll in the sand and off we went home again (after nearly a whole hay bag before and after the ride). When we drove down the road I could see Maraschino and Coco eating happily in the middle (and not close to the gate) - Maraschino had only called out about twice (having grass probably helps!).

Oh - I tried out my new iPhone trail app - we went 3.9km and average speed was 3.5 km/p/h. 55 minutes!