I was half-woman, half-mattress this morning! Pain in my ankle woke me up in the middle of the night. But I wasn't too bad, everything hurt evenly which I was happy about, not too much squintness.
I took Quadi out for a hack today, since we were in the school yesterday. I soaked his front feet in warm water and Hibuscrub too. Well, on the second attempt. He took great offense to the first booting attempt...
As I rode him off the yard, I saw that Coffee and Fin were still around the gate. So Quadi stopped. I got him going again but he repeated this over and over all the way down the drive. Since we were heading out on the same road hack as the last time, I didn't want to start this badly.
At the end of the road there were people in their garden, Quadi took offense to them too.
But we set off, and then he planted because he saw some horses. I got really very cross, ended up giving him a Pony Club boot to snap him out of it and show him I was very serious about the hack, and growled at him. Perhaps not the softest way to deal with him but I know he can hack perfectly well on his own and this was getting boring.
We strode out into a big punchy trot, which was nice and I was pleased he was forward-going. And he continued in the same vein. I don't mind him having a good look at things but dribbling along and then taking offense when I try to control a situation is becoming tiresome. Especially today, I didn't have the physical or mental wherewithall.
I got to the hill and let him have a blast up it, he actually didn't go as fast as I'd thought, so I was pleased to have some brakes. Here is the hill, we started cantering at the white house on the bottom right-hand side:
Since he was not in the most agreeable mood I decided not to go along the 'live' road, and instead double-back and head home the way we came. He was fab and we had another punchy trot home.
I strapped him after work and turned him out rugless.
Still feeling very tired so just jotting everything down before a bath and then bed!
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