Of sorts.... Sam (Lammy) had a WE course hire day at her yard, so off we went. Neither of us have ever done anything like this before so we had Sam to explain the ropes and tell us about all of the obstacles. Gazdag was perfectly behaved, I led him round the arena and showed him the obstacles in hand first, as he has never been to the yard before, and he wasn't bovvered. He wondered when I was going to get on and do some stuff, so I did. Again, not bovvered. Not even a spook, he was very boring!
We did some leg yield and went in and out of the cones, then tackled the gate. He was pretty good at that, except for closing it, as he got distracted by it being so close to his nose and swung his quarters too far away because he was busy sniffing the gate. Never mind, he was chilled and tried hard.
Next the garrocha! I had ridden with a broom handle in preparation at home a few weeks ago, so again he was pretty cool. Sam had me drag it along the floor a bit and hold it on each side of him in case anything happened, so he was prepared for all eventualities. I bopped him on the bum a few times but he didn't mind.
Then we tried to pick up the hoop with the garrocha. We did it a few times but Gazdag was spooked by the movement of the hoop and bounced off, me with reins in one hand, long pole plus hoop rattling about in the other, lol! So we spent a while breaking it down for him, letting him see the hoop, hear it move, see it move around, then we walked next to Sam whilst she held the garrocha and picked up the hoop. Gazdag earned sweeties for being brave and not spooking, so we were able to finish with picking up the hoop calmly in walk with no spooking and a halt straight afterwards, so we left it there.
Only a couple of photos as Sam had her hands full helping to de-spook Gazdag! Many thanks Sam, we both had a fun day and hope to do it again soon.
