4-5 years

We're working on our next goals as Sky turned 4. I'm still mindful of the fact that her spine has not finished fusing yet, so the ridden work is short and low intensity. She's built up a lot of muscular strength from 70 miles of in hand and short ridden work in the last year, and this was done over some hilly terrain so she feels really pretty balanced under saddle and muscularly she is very well developed.

We hack out once or twice a week for about an hour, mostly in walk with a few trots to work on transitions and lightness in 'the feel' here. I still hop off and walk some of the way on rides over 45 minutes to decrease the loading on her back. I'm hoping to do a little more solo ridden work with her, but I admit, I prefer having company. In groups she is a confident lead horse, and has managed to lead across river crossings, so no more wet boots leading her! We're building up to solo ridden or combo in-hand and ridden hacks though and it's part of the plan for the next 6 months. I ride in the arena once a week to do short (20-30 minute) session on the latest areas of progression. We're practicing functional skills in the arena to keep her interested, and as a result, she can now open and close some of the gates on our hacks with me in the saddle. 

At the moment we are working on getting light transitions up and down from trot,  these were very sticky at first, but now post - camp (see Foundational Ridden Work) we have more flow and lightness. She now understands forwards on a lighter cue. So we are combining transition work with stopping and backing up lightly, steering off the legs, a litte leg yielding, and adding in the hindquarters yields and shoulder yields. We are prepararing for a cow confidence and horsemanship clinic in August so I'd like her to be able to trot to halt and turn back to follow a cow. I think she's going to love it as she herds chickens, the yard cat and any sheep we see. I also want to be prepared for a canter in the clinic just in case she decides to follow a cow with enthusiams and so that doesn't come as a surprise to either of us, so we started adding a couple of canter strides in where safe and appropriate on our rides out (with a sane friend, up a short slope that faces away from home).

I'm also getting her out and about a little as she is very 'hefted' to the farm mentally, and seems to have thresholds where she finds it hard to leave a certain perimeter from home. Once she is through that with a little encouragement or a lead off another horse, she is fine again, but I want her to feel confident leaving and being away from home, so we're starting to do short trips out locally which will build her experience in travelling (see Training for travel). 

We managed our first solo short hack (with me riding the whole way) from the yard which felt like a big moment, she walked past a tractor and a motorbike leaving the yard, we went down a 'quiet' lane and had to deal with about 10 well behaved cars who passed us and we walked alongside a horse field with a curious youngster. It was only about 35 minutes but she was listening really well, she was a bit 'looky' but overall it was a brilliant try and we can build on that for our future solo adventures. 

I'm also introducing the bit slowly into some of our hacking work, so she can relax and see it more as 'business as usual', when the demands are low- e.g. on a short walk hack with a friend as that has been an area of concern for her (see Bitting and bridling). Her mouth is quieting down.