Riding with a Hunter - Horses try Mince Pies - Vlog 58 - Beth Endurance

During the second lockdown I made a new hacking friend. Stuart who lives at the farm across from my livery, missing the lack of fun through the countryside I invited him along for a hack. Little did I know how fast hunters are! In all my time living at the livery I've always ridden a bit slower, more conservatively to go hacking with anyone else, the arabs are just so fast over varied terrain in comparison. Stuart and his lovely boy Taurmore can give Tissy a run for her money, he is also substantially bigger than my horses.....so when I'm behind on 14hh Tissy I am the optimum height for being splattered in the mud flying off Taurmores back hooves......try telling Tissy to stay back another 20m though, I swear she grits her teeth, puts her ears back, closes her eyes and hopes for the best rather than be seen as too slow!

It has turned out that we are actually ideal hacking partners (when I say hacking it sounds less like training, but for me hacking is training, we concentrate on changing leads, being on the correct diagonal for corners, managing pace and terrain, getting the distance in). So after a few weeks of going out with Stuart on Tissy, returning back having received the full mud spa treatment, tack and all (you may have seen that), it was now turn to take Azid.

It was the end of his trot only training phase, I wanted to get a slightly longer hack in and add about 5 minutes canter. Now Azid, back before he was injured, wasn't well know for his good behavior so cue Stuart and Taurmore as the 'sensible' influence. I needn't have worried, Azid was exemplary. Unfortunately I made quite a rookie error in the filming and turned my helmet cam off for the good bits......and on for the 'boring' bits, so you don't get to witness Azid expertly opening and closing 5 gates, made all the more impressive by cantering ON THE BUCKLE through open fields before hand and calming down enough to listen, slowly and carefully to open gates.

I LOVE MY HORSE! There are some moments between all the injuries, stress, bad days, monotonous days, days you wished you could just go home after work and not trudge through cold dark fields, days where you seem to have spent every last penny on a horse that does not appreciate the fact....you get my gist.....there are moments where it is worth it and this hack was one of them, nothing overly impressive about it, 14km of road and bridleway but Azid was everything I had trained him to be, he enjoyed it and so did I. ( Also Azid is 15.2hh so we were no longer in the hunter mud flinging firing line).

And on that note MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone!
Thanks for watching,
Beth

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