Our outdoor dressage arena now sports a screened tent, placed a mere metre away from "C". Piper has somewhat gotten used to it, but still goes through a period of hesitation and refusal before moving forward. So more work is needed.
Meanwhile, however, we have also been working on mileage and his ability to just keep moving forward. How? Trail riding!
Sunday, we went on a 3+ hour trail ride, the longest one so far, with some friends. Since we have a shortage of riding trails, most of the ride involved walking on the road. However, a good couple miles was on mountain snowmobile trails near Mount Kearsarge.
Piper's stubborn streak reared its ugly little head a few times. While leading the ride, he would suddenly decide to stop, turn around, and "head home". To get him to continue forward, another horse would have to take the lead.
This occasional stubborn behaviour seems to be part of his character and shows in other ways as well, and shows up even when doing things as routine as lifting a hoof for cleaning. The challenge is to get past these stubborn moments... quickly...
In the case of a dressage test, that means within 20 seconds. Work continues.
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Good to hear of dressage riders and horses getting out and about. So often DQ's get stuck in the arena and create horses that are so mad that the rider fears the big outdoors ;)
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