I joined the Tweed Trail Riders Club with him and went on our first ride. It was extremely long and some of it was very difficult. Complete bush bashing and going up some rather steep cliffs to get round logs on the track. He coped brilliantly and even showed up the trail masters wonderful stock horse by being the only horse to willing go over the first log we came across. I was very proud of him.

He turned out to be a great trail horse. We rarely had any troubles. Other than when we went on the 3-day camp.

The first day he was great and powered on regardless of what anyone else was doing. It was a really long ride, but he listened to me the whole way. However the second and third days weren't so good. He just pulled and pulled and I got tired and sore and frustrated because I simply couldn't communicate with him like I wanted to. It seemed that every few strides I had to bend him till he calmed down, and he never really calmed down. He was sweating profusely and just quivering. Perhaps someone put extra adrenalin in his feed or something.

Nothing worked to calm him down. I tried bending him to a stop and waiting till he gave to me, taking him for a gallop till he couldn't gallop any more, letting another person on him who wasn't so tired and so could continue to do things properly. None of them worked.

I don't really know why he went like that. He just got himself so worked up so easily, whether there were other horses around or not. And then he would not, or I should say, could not calm down again. I ended up not taking him on some rides because not only did I not want to battle the whole way, but I figured there was something wrong because it was very abnormal behaviour for him.

He excelled at sporting events. The club had a fun day in which we did bends, flags, barrels and other fun events. Although he'd never done any of them before, he went very well and outdid a lot of the more experienced horses. He would happily gallop through the barrels then dop his energy right back down so he could stand with the other horses. He also jumped some low jumps without worrying and was generally perfect :)

Everyone there loved him and most of the people were PNH so they could help me with any problems that arose.

Home

Hosted by