A calm hack without any extra excitement!

After trying the new treeless over at Trudi's yesterday, I rode Anky out in it today  but set the stirrup bars back a little and put the knee blocks on. I'm beginning to like it quite a lot. It felt better with the new stirrup settings and blocks and allowed my leg to fall  more in alignment.  After my last hack with Anky, I'd already decided to avoid any kind of argument and get off and lead her at the first sign of resistance to continue, so when she refused to go past the stone cutter building I got off and led her past all her usual scary things. She was quite happy to follow me and after about 15 minutes I remounted and we continued on for a while before returning for home.
She was much more forward on the way home so I concentrated on keeping her straight and soft and she was better today. We had two or three short trots and the saddle felt fine.
I had a young girl call round last week to ask if she could use the arena to school her horse. As I haven't got a proper grader and it's been getting quite hard, her father offered to come round and loosen it up for me.  Yesterday whilst I was at Trudi's he came round and did just that. I wasn't here so not quite sure what he used, but it is very soft now( a little too soft, I think) , but I've levelled it today with my little pallet and I think it's going to be fine. I took Remy up there  this morning  before I levelled it and he loved it -  for rolling in - hmmphhh!

Time to think.

I went for a walk (I know, I hate walking anywhere!) with Obi up our chemin, needed time to think. Obi had a good time and it gave me time to check out my school (doesn't look much like one at the moment).

So this afternoon, the horses were up by the gate so I went in for Anky and took her straight into the "picadero" (that does sound pretentious - you know that I mean the bottom of the garden). The other three came galloping over, but Anky was really quite focussed on me. I led her and halted for several minutes and then placed my self at the side of her wth the aim of lungeing her. The rope was slack and she followed my body signals from halt, to walk, then to trot, back to walk, trot etc. She was the most focussed she has been. We were in there for about 15-20 minutes and I had her attention the whole time. To finish, I took her back to the yard, asked her to halt and stand and then just looped the rope over the tie-up whilst I brushed her off. She remained there, perfectly still.
Remy was at the gate by this time, looking for his mum, so when I put her back in the field, I brought him out (I've never taken him away from the others before) and did a little groundwork with him. He was a little distracted , mainly curiosity, I think, and quite alarmed when we went past our burning bin which was still smoking from earlier, but on the whole he was very good and most of all he was calm. So, a positive afternoon.