Continuing Exploration

Longer hack, up the road and took a new sharp left to see if I could indeed explore these fields without riding across them. The dead grass you see in a line ahead of Tristan's ears is in fact the remnants of a tractor road, with fine footing for walking. We went to the tree line and came back. We'll definitely head back.

Tris was an utter shit for the first 10 minutes out, wandering across the road, flinging his shoulders everywhere, walking soooooo slooooooowly. He wanted to be back in the barn eating hay. About a half mile in he eased in to the work and most of the rest of the ride was quite nice. We had a few short trot stretches on good footing. He did have one ugly moment later on, when we exited this field and I turned him away from the barn to keep going. He flung his head around and danced and backed up, and put one hind foot worryingly close to a dropoff by a culvert. I lost my temper for a moment, yanked his head around, and booted HARD, basically shoving him into a trot for 100 yards down the road.

Our walk back was good, and I took a bit of a hold of the reins and asked for a little coming through the bit, which he obliged. We got back to flat ground and his hind end went all wobbly! So we walked on the flat road for another half mile to help him work out of it, which he did nicely. So this ride definitely accomplished what I wanted it to - hard hill work - and it's good that he has tonight scheduled off.