Tally and I went to pony club - and I didn't die!

I finally got around to taking the rather-fat-and-lazy Tally out to a pony club rally. The first person who greeted me said "I remember you! You have the crazy grey horse!". Good start.

We continued, Tally put in a couple of impressive airs above the ground in protest at...something? before deciding that he had all the attention he needed, ie everyone in the vicinity waiting to dial triple 1 and proceeded to behave himself. There was a lot of neck arching and tail flicking in amongst the "dressage" as he pranced around. He got very annoyed when the crowds attention waned so he put in another, smaller show and received an audible gasp from a small girl on a Shetland pony. He was pleased and I was highly embarrassed.

We then split into groups and began doing some flatwork. Tally put on his super trot and got into a power struggle with a little bay mare. Our instructor was cool, her name is Natalie and she does Advanced eventing. She said Tally looked really nice but I needed to work on my heels. Tally decided that it was time that he showed her his heels and put in a series of rather impressive bucks. By now, he seemed to have all the non-required mothers in the pony club watching him and began to flaunt his obvious superiority over the other horses.

Then it came around to jumping. I was needlessly apprehensive about this, we were each jumping a small course by ourselves and I was a bit concerned Tally would factor in the nearby fence into this course. While trotting around, this little Shetland job was hopping cavaletti on the other side of the fence, Tally took extreme offence at it and shot sideways with much snorting and looks of Arabian horror.

He was awesome over fences Excited Excited He didn't hesitate at all and was really trying hard. He also didn't nap towards the other horses. I was thrilled, even more so when Natalie kept saying what a nice jump he had and how cute he was. Tally tossed his mane in reply and settled down to try and chew another horses reins.

I then was set an exercise in counting strides, cantering in a circle over a pole and counting "three, two, one" on approach. I thought I was doing rather well until Natalie pointed out that Tally was jumping whenever I yelled "one" regardless of whether it was the right stride. After that I avoided another flatwork session as my thighs were systematically committing suicide ("Tally's been so good that I want to end on a good note...") and untacked. Oh, there was Tally sidling off and grabbing a bamboo flag from one of the races and crunching down on it when I wasn't paying attention.

He seemed find on his feet, not sore at all and he was very well-behaved, at least on the Tally scale so hopefully, we're going show-jumping in Feilding on Saturday.