CastleMouse
Well-Known Member
I am absolutely thrilled with how well behaved Ali was today out hunting!
Arrived at the the meet, went for a quick drink in the pub with a few friends, and then unboxed him. He was more relaxed than last week and calmly stood around with everyone else whilst we were setting off, he wasn't that jumpy at all fortunately! We set off down the road for about a mile, and whilst we were all trotting along there was a horse in the field next to the road who was going absolutely beserk, and broke through the fence
One of the car followers fortunately had a headcollar and leadrope in their car and we managed to locate the horse's owner. We then headed into a very boggy field, with bog bushes (no idea what they're called, they're horrible prickly bushes anyway
) everywhere. We had to go through a very tight space between two bog bushes and instead of walking through, Ali decided to take a huge leap over the small gap, which I certainly wasn't expecting!
We stood around for about 15 minutes, and I was very worried that Ali was going to have a large tantrum within the first minute of us standing around, but no, he didn't! He stood quietly for the 15 minutes, and didn't move once! Loads of people were shocked as well! We then headed on and jumped a few very dirty ditches, Ali was an absolute star! We then had to stand on a farm lane for another 15 minutes, and the amount of people that came up to me and said that he's a completely different horse was unbelievable! He was no longer Ali the rearing terror!
They all asked me if I had schooled him intensely for the past 2 weeks, and they were quite shocked when I said I hadn't ridden him since the hunt two weeks ago, and he had only been lunged once on Wednesday! I honestly thought he'd be a lot more jumpy, considering I've only reduced his usual feeding levels slightly as well (I know, I know...). Won't go into too much detail about the rest of the day, but when we were standing around (which we did a lot of tbh!) he was so well behaved. We jumped a few things in forestry, jumped a few stone walls and a few more ditches. He only had one tantrum when I was getting prepared to jump a stone wall, when some idiot came thundering past in front of me, as if he didn't see that I was holding him back and about to jump the bloody wall!
We finished up at about 3, very short day but I'm glad we finished up early as it wouldn't stop raining. In the pub afterwards so many people said he was probably the best hunter out there today
I'm honestly over the moon with him, and I'm really looking forward to next Saturday with him
The only decent photo Dad got of us today -
Do excuse the state of me...
Do excuse the state of me...
