The Not-So-Secret Diary of Diva the Shetland Pony - Floof!
18/04/2024Diva (Melland Queen of Scots) usually gets her summer coat quite early compared to other horses and ponies, but this year she has been holding onto hers for a lot longer.
I am currently lightly backing my three-year-old American Quarter Horse before turning him away for the winter.
In my previous post, I explained the setbacks this year, and frustratingly I had to start the process much later in the year than I’d anticipated. But things were going well, too well…
Ride number five and it all went a bit wrong. We had done lots in the field, and bit of hacking and our first small jog under saddle in an arena. We went back to the same arena to try to get some more jog (jog is trot to those who don’t ride Western) and it really wasn’t our day.
Django was very distracted, but they aren’t robots and we can’t hide from those days, so we carried on anyway. My instructor decided it was best to use the lunge line in case she needed to “hang on”. Little did she know just how much she would be hanging on!
Every time we asked for a jog, Django was feeling a bit spicy and doing a little hump – a small, laughable hump. Only this time, he lost his front leg and did a stumble on the front as he humped with the back. Now only on one leg, and still very physically downhill and very unbalanced with the weight of a rider, over he went, landing on top of me.
Thankfully, my instructor had the weight of his head and shoulders, so he wasn’t able to completely roll over. Instead, he decided to catch my knee and chest as he stood up, and he isn’t light! With no real damage done to me, my focus was on leading Django around to make sure he was OK, settled and hadn’t lost any confidence from the fall.
The following day I got right back on and he didn’t seem at all concerned, so fingers crossed this hasn’t affected our journey, although I am sure the clocks going back might!
