Grotty Groom rides again.

It's been a while - two weeks in fact - since Grotty Groom has ridden The Boy Wessles. Hormonal Hannah is still doing something with Baggy's head, that's preventing her from taking Grotty to the yard. Today was only the second time that she's been since her last lesson. But having a lesson booked means that Grotty has to put her big girl's pants on and get on with it. Baggy felt pretty down when she woke up this morning, and extremely nervy, and panicky. She felt a bit better when she'd had her happy pill, but she was still anxious. Hannah tried to make her cancel her lesson, but Clever Bird convinced her not to. To keep her distracted she also set The Domestic Goddess into action, packing more stuff for Calum to take to the other house tonight and doing some cleaning.

On the way to the yard, Baggy was getting more and more panicky, but as soon as Grotty saw her Boys, she realised how much she'd missed them and Baggy soon began to relax. They were just interested in munching their hay! Wessles gave Grotty a few head butts and a cuddle, then carried on munching while she groomed him and re-plaited his mane. He hasn't been ridden for two weeks and it was really cold, just 3 deg. Cent., so he was rather frisky. Not to mention that the yard was like Piccadilly Circus with things going on left, right and centre. But after warming up, he went into some beautiful trot work and once again Clever Bird couldn't understand what is preventing Baggy from seeing the Boys more.

As Vicky-May set out poles, Wessles watched her and started to get excited. That horse loves to work. He was still relaxed, but he started to get quite strong. A weird little quad-bike type thingy, with some kind of cage went past, Wessles freaked slightly. Grotty took him through the pole exercise. He did it quite well. The quad-bike thingy reappeared. They did the pole exercise again. He shot through with Grotty trying to halt him. And failing. The quad-bike thingy headed back. Wesley started to get skittish. Grotty got him to concentrate and he went into dressage diva mode and did the poles beautifully. Next time she turned him towards the poles he anticipated and shot forwards. Lots of circling ensued. Again with the quad-bike! But he was being a poppet, and excited very keen poppet, but a poppet nonetheless. Then suddenly he shot sideways across the arena in a flat-out gallop, straight towards a jump - Grotty pulled him up, eventually, without going over the jump. He'd freaked out at a person walking up the yard!!!! Back to concentrating. Back to some very good work, once Baggy's heart rate had returned to something resembling normal. He might be "quirky" but boy oh boy does Grotty love that horse..........