So.... I decided to take Funny on Adventure #2 at Ashland today. I was originally planning to wait til Sunday and go back out with Liz and Peri again. BUT... Dan gets his massage Sunday, which means Funny would have to stand around for that. And Dan's hard enough to keep contained on his own. And Aubrey was doing a XC clinic on Sunday, which meant that there would be a lot of horses and possibly not be conducive to trying to get Funny over the ditches. And then, Dan seemed to be sore in his neck, so rather than dressage him, I figured today would be a good day to take Funny along. There was no one scheduled to use the XC field and it was hot and muggy, so the shenanigans may have been less likely. So we did! We went by ourselves and it was just fine.
She took a little longer to load today, but we eventually got it. She's stubborn. She doesn't panic, she doesn't fight.. she just stands there and stares. So that's basically what I did back. Just waited. And bribed with cookies. Once she was on, she was happy to stand. She unloaded well, despite me having parked so the ramp was pretty steep. She slid a tiny bit, but thank goodness for those (unbelievably heavy) rubber strips. Everyone got groomed and they shared hay bags uneventfully.
We headed out and unfortunately, there was a group that had booked stadium for the entire day. But they had returned and had put on XC vests, so I was annoyed. I figured I'd try to beat them out there. So we went around the little lake as our warm up. Funny didn't spook or balk at the double lake on both sides, like Dan and Fleck did. We got to the XC field and walked into the water complex. She was brave and pretty much went straight in. She looked at it for a minute and snorted once, but then went in. Then she went up the bank to get out. However, coming down the bank into water was a no go. Fair enough. It was for Dan too. We went up two separate banks and then went in the water a few times. At this point the other riders had showed up, but bless them, they stayed at the top of the field and let us do our thing without creating a circus. We walked over to the ditches and I walked Funny over the fake ditch and then over the half ditch. She was very brave over both of them. She got a little balky at the baby real ditch, but... she did it. It took a little convincing but not that much. Good girl! So then, since the other riders had been nice, we headed off to the woods for a hack. I debated doing the banks again, especially down, but I didn't want to bother them. (We did do the down bank on our way back to the trailer and she was perfect and went right off it).
We hit the trails and they were good. We even trotted a little bit. And when we were walking, Funny even got a little ahead and led. We tried walking a few logs and she still does NOT like to do that. We finished back at the lake and splashed a little bit. It wasn't as exciting as the first day. But the kids had fun.
So then we went back up to the XC field and I tried trotting over a few logs. Ha! Funny does NOT like to jump. I finally managed to get her to trot over some amoeba logs so success! Then we went to walk over the cross rail and she tried to walk over the high part and hit it with her knee.. took the entire jump down with her! Oh baby girl... I really hope you end up learning how to jump! You're supposed to be an eventer!
After we untacked and they were both eating hay at the trailer, I took her to the hose to get a rinse. She was fine leaving Dan and he looked, but was fine with her leaving. After her, I tried to take him but she started to dance a little on the end of her lead line. I decided that perhaps we would work on tieing and having Dan leave a bit before we tried it at the trailer. Especially since she's in a rope halter and I didn't have her break away or hay string tied to the trailer. So.. she came with us and I tied her to the tree while I rinsed Dan. It worked. But we'll definitely need some practice before I could feel comfortable about leaving her in the trailer while I ride Dan. She took a bit longer to load up to go home, but the ramp was still pretty steep. But again, she eventually decided the treats were worth it.
So yep! Overall, SUPER good day. :) She's a smart, sane, athletic baby girl. Oh... at one point, while we were trying to "jump" the logs, she got to bucking and kicking. Whoopsie! Sassy pants!
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