Dragonfly Danger

Thankfully Nancy, Kika & I managed to find time for two forestry hacks last week. One Thursday evening (which inspired the title of this post) and one Saturday morning.

04/08/2015

Thursday evening was interesting...as has become my lazy norm I have taken to carrying Nancy's tack down to the field with me (which is half way to the woods entrance); grooming her quickly with the brushes, hoof pick & fly spray that live with their hay bale and tacking her up in the field to go from there rather than wasting our time with the back & forth of retracing our steps to the barn and back down the same stretch of private road to the woods.
Unlike my usual though, Thursday I decided to hand walk the pair of them and myself to the forestry trail entrance as a load of stacked hay bales lining part of the trail had been covered in plastic since we last passed them and being by myself with the two horses i didn't want to get myself into a sticky situation that I might not be able to get out of. Needless to say though, because Nancy, I was unnecessarily cautious. She walked alongside me not even flicking an interested ear at the black covered bales so part way down the row of them I clambered on board and we rode the rest of the way.

#shadowpuppets
 3 amigos 06/08/2015

Unfortunately what i could not foresee was the eejits who drove at speed behind us and along a parallel route & just out of sight of Nancy but in such a way as we could hear them and catch flashes of their shadow through the trees. For all Nancy's bravery & absolute zen even she got a little jiggy (by her standards) by what she could hear but couldn't quite see. K was sound asleep alongside her as she invariably is on these strolls we undertake, but Nancy has never walked down the opening stretch of trail with such a pep in her step & wholly alert to her surroundings. She didn't really settle after that and was by no means bad or unmanageable just not her usual relaxed self. As i said she had a pep in her step which I'm sure Kika would have rather ed she didn't as it meant she had to sleep walk faster than usual lolz.

Papped sharing food, Kika's i-never face

The dragonfly danger came as we wound our way along the last 3/4 of the forestry trail we were on and N was still a little looky when we met a dragonfly. She watched it's every move but was glad when it passed us without interaction. She was considerably less impressed with the two we met a few strides later that were much more intent on each other than the two hairy horses bearing down on them. Nancy watched them fascinated as the circled Ettington ever closer to her head and was shocked and appalled when one of them flew straight into her head. I actually wish I hadn't been on her back and that I could have seen her facial expression!

08/08/2015

Saturdays trail ride was 100% tame and thankfully uneventful by comparison. We went on a new trail i hadn't been on before and probably won't take again as despite being marked as an equine trail (post with a horseshoe on it) . The rocks and stones all over the path and no verge or any option for the horses to sidestep made my mind up to never take it again. We didn't meet a soul especially not any dragonflies lolz
The most exiting thing was having out first coordinated trot in the woods in a long time. It did take two attempts and a false start as dopey Kika missed the initial memo ;-)

Strollin' Strollin' Strollin'

...Rawhide - sorry have that line of that song stuck in my head.

It's been another quiet week for me saddle-wise despite my hopes for forestry hacking with my sister. As per usual the time seems to have gotten away from us.  She got in late Tuesday evening, I saw her briefly Wednesday evening when we fed the ponehs. Thursday i had a friends birthday dinner to go to, Friday 10 peeps came to my place for the inaugural bbq which meant I spent most of Saturday cleaning *blush*

You'd think I'd never been told
 to keep my heels down

We did manage to get out into the woods together this morning. She rode Nancy while i took Kika-the-giant-chicken, who was very good despite her cowardice. Love them!

Sadly we forgot all about the cameras on our phones so the pics accompanying this post were snapped by my sis as i rode Nancy bareback for the first time back to the field. I know I know...i am normally a helmet Nazi and rarely climb on a horse without a helmet. However I also rarely have company when handling the horses so for once I had someone on the ground in case for whatever reason something might go awry i took advantage of climbing aboard Nancy's broad back & even ponied Kika part of the way. I think i have discovered my new favourite way of getting them back out to the field after work...it's a 5 to 10mins walk ;-)

My fav pic of the day