Hot Mess Express, TOOT TOOT

I don't know what got into me yesterday. A wild, burning notion perhaps?

I was like, "its warm, I also have an hour and a half, and also a perfectly good horse sitting in a pasture and I'm also stone cold bored out of my skull....LETS WORK THE BABY. YAS, LETS DO THAT"

"This can't go badly at all after basically 8 weeks off" and consistently terrible rides before that...

"No, not at all. We will just do some walking exercises, maybe some basic W/T transitions and directional changes. YAS BASIC GROUNDWORK THINGS LETS DO DIS"

I figured I would tack him up in his lunging gear, put a bridle on, but lunge with a halter over top so as not to pull on his mouth if the he gave me antics. I also planned on only possibly connecting the sidereins towards the end of our session. I was confident that even if he pulled his old tricks I could keep him on point with lots of direction changes and transitions and being very very calm in my mannerisms.

Looking like the essence of calm

As soon as we got out to the field I realized we would be swimming, and the mud was bordeline questionable. OK, so, ABSOLUTELY NO TROTTING. Just direction changes and giving with the nose, etc etc etc.

HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA.

Yeah, no. 

The very instant I asked for the first direction change  after a few walking circles, Bacardi was SO offended he instantly everted to his old 'spooking-bucking-kicking-for-absolutely-no-reason' fuck you sort of behavior.

I DO WHAT I WANT

WEEEEEEE!

FUCK YOU MOM

THERES NO RULES FOR MEEEE

So I just sat there, dumbfounded on what to do, while simultaneously panicking that he would pop a tendon romping around like like Captain Insano (dont worry, his legs are cool and tight today).

I tried stopping him with some firm half halts and stepping in front of his line of fire (attempting to "cut him off"), but that just pissed him off more, so I kind of gave up and let him wheel around like a twirl-a-whirl on hooves while I gazed on in a half-amused, very disapproving fashion.

Impressive 

Really working those lower neck muscles

Personal favorite

I continued to ask him to "whoah walk" about a 100 times, and lightly half-halted on the rope...but to no avail.

And so he continued...

WHEE WHEE WHEEEEE!!

So wow. Very horse. Many flexible. Much athlete. 

...For about 20 minutes.

That wasn't the end of it though. My special red nugget had had enough of his dumb human and her commands pleas to behave like a normal horse and literally stopped dead in his mad galloping tracks, looked me in the eye, and promptly dumped  his ass in the mud.

O yeah get in there all deep like B, I really wanted to spend my evening cleaning tack.

Twice.

5 stars for all around coverage

YAY I'M A HORSE 

At this point  I was just dying with laughter. If you haven't seen the video I posted on Insta and FB you really should because you can actually hear him quivering with happiness in his roll. Jerk! HAHA.

After ALLL that, he finally settled into a trot tranter, which still wasn't what I wanted, but it wasn't as wild and unmanageable as before. Which was....good?

Pic not in chrono order

Then finally (praise jesus) he walked and gave me a few perfectly calm direction changes. 

At this point I was like, "okay, baby steps, HOUSTON WE HAVE A WALK" and brought him back to the barn without ever trying sidereins or anything else.

Note horse is still clean. I did not get any video of him actually calmly walking or trotting with his muddy self (this was before his shenanigans began, but still a good example for picture's sake)

Essentially I let my horse run around and be a fuck boy for 30 minutes and got 2 minutes of semi-OK things out of him. Something I NEVER thought I would be okay with/do, but hey, we all change right? End on a good note and hope for the best next time?

At least he had a good ole time. Not sure how we will progress from here considering our "riding field" is LITERALLY a pond. No, really, its going to be impossible for weeks now. I guess we will get really good at hyper hacking down the road!