Stand Off

It was a lovely evening and I thought I know, I'll ride Q.

For his part, Q had other ideas, and it went something like this.

Q comes into stable in time to see me walking up the yard with his tack. He promptly turns around and wanders off out again. No worries, I think, he'll be back, I'll just get on with yard jobs while I wait. Q thinks "hmmm, looks like mother has plans which are going to interfere with my evening off; better avoid her". About ten minutes later, he wanders back in with great caution. I walk to his stable door and he wanders back out. I wait at the door. He stands outside, eyeing me up, thinking "hmmm". He wanders in and out a few times, torn in equal parts between wanting his tea and not wanting to expend any actual energy by having to be ridden. FGS, surely I hadn't forgotten he'd worked the last two days? What was I thinking? Could I not see he was wasting away before my very eyes?

I wait at the door and he decides to risk coming in. He spots the headcollar and wanders off outside, then stands there looking at me again. "Hmmm", I think. I open the door, turn my back to him and enjoy the view, humming along in the pointless fashion of one involved in a game of artful manoeuvres involving fastidious ignorance with a particularly determined stallion. Q wanders around a bit, ostentatiously sniffing a handy poo pile and going through the elaborate dunging ritual that he and T like to do several thousand times a day. I maintain my air of utter nonchalance. It's a waiting game. We each have our pieces and our tactics, and we approach the game with all the art and subtlety of the grand master of chess. With hooves and big hair and a black hole where his work ethic should be on his part, a pocket full of bits of apple and a headcollar on mine.

This goes on for roughly 45 minutes, until eventually I out-manoeuvre him with an artful double bluff involving a bit of apple and the headcollar. He's not chuffed, but submits with reasonable grace. We go out onto the yard to prepare.

Thing is, I don't particularly want to go in the picadeiro either so decide to ride him in the field. Tack up (not as easy as it might be with the moving target of half a ton of "don't wanna") and off we toddle to field. Get him to stand by mounting block, just about to clamber on when he pulls away and buggers off across said field, directly to the stallion on the other side of the fence.

Catch up with him just as they are doing their "who might you be?" ritual and immediately send him to work on a very small circle to underline the point that such behaviour is Not Allowed and always, always makes for More Hard Work. Point made, return to mounting block, clamber on without incident and put him through a range of lateral movements in a large figure eight; shoulder in; travers, renvers and half pass. Once comms are sufficiently restored, off we toddle around the field on a progressively longer rein and closer to the fence until we can get around the entire field with complete focus. The ground is too hard to thrash around and besides, we thrashed around last time and I don't want him thinking that riding in the field automatically equates to thrashing around.

That successfully concludes the evening's doings. Little shit :)