We would normally box out for hacking from my livery but the current situation means the lorry hasn’t moved for weeks and I was worried that Qantas, having done so little travelling in his life, would have forgotten how to load. I also wanted to try him out in travel boots for the first time. So now was an ideal opportunity to combine boots and loading practice together.
We also went for our first ‘longer’ hack. I call anything under 10km a short hack, anything over 10km a long hack and anything over 20km training rides. I don’t know why but that’s the vocabulary I’ve developed so that when any of my family ask ‘what you up to?’ they just know roughly how long I’ll be gone by the type of hack I say. Silly really, it’s not from any official terminology but that’s how we roll.
I was really impressed with Q for handling the wooden bridge so bravely, mastering gates with ease and being excellent in traffic. Azid threw me under a car last year and has dumped me on several occasions so I find it extra pleasing to be on a young horse who is so sensible. Azid is getting much better though, the problem with him is he’s so inconsistent. Combine harvester coming past, fine, doesn’t blink, scary flapping plastic wrap speeding past on a trailer, no problem, twig snapping 20m away, terrifying, but only on Tuesdays. Sometimes he jumps just at a change of road surface, sometimes he hates bicycles, other times a whole pelaton can go past with no bother. You just never know what might scare him on that given day so it’s quite hard to train it out of him because I can desensitise him just fine to almost everything but it doesn’t mean that on a sunny Friday afternoon in June that umbrellas won’t come and eat him.
Beth Endurance 