Horse eating gremlins are everywhere

Wednesdays ride was the ride I like to call "overcome with the fear of horse eating gremlins." To be fair Tillie was wonderful in the ring...it was just our experiences when we left the ring that made this ride a bit more interesting.

Trying to hold on to the simple things in life, like a pretty sunset even if our ride wasnt stellar

Wednesday I really had to talk myself into going to ride. I just was not feeling motivated, but I am glad I did go. Despite there being lessons going on with some questionable steering, Tillie was pretty focused. Not quite as soft or supple as I would like, but she would give my some lengthening of her neck without losing her tempo or the connection!

BOT mesh sheet before and after rides = a happy relaxed Tillie

I did some canter work pushing the canter forward and then asking her to back off again without using any hand. As hard as that was to do, I was really impressed with how well she did it and without sass UNTIL the lesson with the children left and she noticed Isabelle (You'll often see her in Emma's blog) being long lined in the round pen next to the ring. She locked her side eye on her and began bracing on the right rein...even though we had been working past Isabelle the entire time without problems at this point...and when I did a check and balance on it she did a bit of a head toss before settling down.

The end of our trail ride adventure...where Tillie thought everything would eat her

 I made her do it one more time at the same end of the ring to establish it is possible when other horses are around and then decided to push my luck and take her on a cool down walk through the woods. After all, most days I get there after work so its too dark to go and I am usually too chicken to alone. BUT Tillie does seem to look to me more when we are without other horses and riders and I figured she needs to do this alone if we ever are going to improve and try conditioning one of these days.

She was a bit tense and looky at deer, fox, random leaves which I all scolded her slightly reminding her these things live with her in her pasture every day (Yes literally the deer come in her field every night). She kept it together until we came upon Gremlin Mountain.

I call it that because every time I have ridden this ravine/hill down to the stream crossing no matter which direction (ascending or descending) every horse, the seasoned and the green, just do not seem to like it. So we all have joked there must be horse eating gremlins down there we humans cant see...

After a few rears and spins without any bolting (see its the simple things) I got the mare down the hill and across the stream without any more trouble.

Yay for progress!