Working in the round pen, loping on the field, visiting the indoor riding arena..

I am currently working at the horse farm and we have also B&b quests in here. So my job is to take care of the boarding horses, make the breakfast for the quests and clean the rooms. I work here as a private entrepreneur for 10 days.

I took Muuli here with me with the idea that I have plenty of time to work with her too. At this barn we have roundpen, indoor riding arena, outdoor arena and great forests to do trail riding.

I got a photographer Reetta Ollila visiting us at the one day and here I tell about that visit.

First I cut Muuli's awfull long mane away. Her mane doesn't grow very long and it looks quite untidy in it's natural shape.

I tacked Muuli up at the aisle of the barn. Muuli is used to stand there in cross ties. Then we headed out to the round pen. My idea was to do a bit groundwork before riding. And it turned out to be a perfect solution, because after it the mounting was very easy and unstressfull for Muuli. She has a bolting background and she gets very tense when I sit on the saddle. I need to take her head almost to my leg to prevent her from bolting. And then we just stand there until she feels relaxed.

Before mounting I took an empty big barrel to the arena and I wanted to see, how Muuli reacts when I give her a lots of pressure to get her over that weird thing.

These are the cases where she tempts to bolt when I ride. For example if I try to ride over big puddle on the road and give her more pressure, she refuses, turns and tries to bolt. This time I managed to get her twice over the barrel. The problem was the barrel, it was too short so it was very easy to go around.

The weather was challenging to photographer. We had sun and very dark clouds taking turns in the sky.

Muuli had bosal hackamore just because it looks better in the pictures. I can handle her better with the PeeWee-bit. Lickily I had photographer friend with me to call an ambulance if I fell down badly. I walked and trotted a bit in the round pen and after maybe 10 minutes we headed to the road.

This was the second time riding Muuli on the open field and first time alone without horse/mule/donkey companion. And Muuli was perfect!! No bolting or any hesitation. I trotted and loped short strides for the pictures and walked a lot with Muuli. I think we were in the field maybe 20 minutes total.

After the field I continued riding in the indoor riding arena. We don't have one back at home, so I wanted to get Muuli used to it. This wasn't the first time she was in, because Muuli was living in this stable for 3 months right after I got her from Spain. But we didn't use indoor riding arena much back then. The last time she was in arena was a year ago.

There were some working equitation obstacles inside the arena and Muuli didn't really have tolerance for them. So she refused to go to the other side of the arena. This is exactly the situation where she bolts quite easily. She is afraid of something and I try to encourage her to go closer and I don't let her turn away from the scary object.

Here Muuli tried to escape from the scary blue barrel

She tried to turn, but I was ready and did one rein stop and there we were going merry-go-round for a couple of turns until she calmed down. By the end of our 15 minutes session we were able to ride around the arena without problems.

Then I got down and we returned tot he pen with Muuli. Reetta took some conformation pictures and we also played with the donkeys a bit. I had Muuli's bosal with me so we tacked biggest donkey, Lumi, and rode her around the pen for a couple of time. She wasn't very amused but all the other donkeys were!

Reetta and Lumi