The First Natural Horsemanship Association Play Day - and Gemma's first trail ride!

The First Natural Horsemanship Association Play Day - and Gemma's first trail ride!
www.LFEquestrian.com

The NHA playday is about bringing natural horsemanship people together and playing with your horses. You can watch and learn from each other and try new things.

We hosted the playday at Partridge Farm and set up various obstacles between our 2 grass rings. We started the day with a brief tour around the rings, sharing some ideas you could with each obstacle.

I decided to play with Balius - partly because Thetis is still having time off from her 25 mile Competitive Trail Ride we did last weekend, but also because I haven't been playing with my young guy as much as I want to, so it was nice to bring him out.

We had a few horses trailer in, and some people use some of my other horses. Marcie played with Shania, which was nice because Shania doesn't typically get a lot of attention.

We played all morning through the various obstacles - jumping the barrels, doing a squeeze, kicking the ball, and more!

After a fun filled morning of a bunch of ground games, we had some potluck lunch. There was tons of food - and lots of fruit and veggies :) The chocolate cupcakes satisfied the sweet tooth before saddling up for the afternoon trail ride.

I decided to take Gemma on her first trail ride - she's been riding walk, trot, canter very nicely in the ring, so I thought this would be a good time to try her on the trails with so many other quiet horses for her to show her what to do.

The weather was sunny and warm, the trails were quiet and beautiful, and Gemma was an absolute Gem! She wasn't spooky at all and we did forest, open field, and even road partway through a subdivision! We even rode walk, trot, and canter. She did give a large rock a bit of the look, and did toss her head playfully a couple times - but overall she was just fantastic... and we did about 2 hours of trail riding!

Marcie took Merlin on the trail which was a great experience for him too - he will be returning to his owner soon, and it was nice to give him an experience with someone different riding him (but still staff of LFE). Merlin was golden as expected - he really has become a super easy trail horse.

There are lots of pictures from the day:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lfequestrian/sets/72157629932693224/