As soon as Solo was fit enough, we took him out the roundpen and ponied him from an calm, well trained horse. On his first trip, he was just walked on the lead for about 20 minutes to see how he would take to it. Other than the occasional nibble at his patient lead horse’s shoulder, he did really well. Since then, we have ponied him three or four times. I try to do two days of lunging/roundpen work followed by a hack out on the lead. Both horses have to be well booted in case they bump into each other at any time.
We find that all our horses settle down and enjoy ‘Pairs Hacking’ and later in life it lets us exsercise two at a time when we are busy.
Solo was brave about new things on the hack. At one point we were close to the river and he watched two apparently bottomless people kyak past him, he didn’t make a fuss but all three of us had to stand and watch until the heads and shoulders disappeared around a bend, Solo wanted to see everything.
