Reason / Unreason

“I survive by finding the sweet spot between reason and unreason, between the rational and irrational.”

I feel like this quote sums up my ride today.  I thought we would have a lovely hack, maybe with some trotting up the grassy hill to start getting her into better shape.  I thought wrong.  I took her into the jump ring, hopped on, and then headed for the wooded trail that leads down to the nice grass path.  You can also go down the lane next to the paddocks to get there, but it's always nice to be in the shade.  I didn't really think anything of it as we walked to the woods, but a rabbit darting in front of us made apparently meant that "there are dragons in those woods and we can't go in there."  She is not normally a worrier when it comes to hacking, but once she came to that conclusion there was no way I was going to change her mind.  In fact, at one point, she snaked her head around and grabbed ahold of my boot to tell me just how wrong I was about asking her to move.  That earned her a little kick in the nose and a smack.  As she stood there refusing to move, she was getting more and more agitated - puffed up, breathing fire, tense as all get-out.  So, I turned her around, went back in the ring, and made her work until she was listening and moving forward in a civilized manner.  At that point, we attempted to tackle the trail again and she immediately said "no."  There was no tension, no worry, just flat out stubbornness.  So we went down the lane instead, and she immediately puffed up and started gnashing the bit like she was about to be stuffed in the start box and asked to run.  
She then arbitrarily decided, a ways down the lane, that one of the gates was too terrifying to pass by.  Except she wasn't really acting afraid of it.  She just put on the breaks and refused to move forward.  And so we sat there.  She never once tried to turn around, but she also didn't want to move forward.  I kicked for awhile, and whenever she would take a step, I would stop kicking and tell her she was good.  She would then walk a few steps and decide "nope, I still don't want to go by that gate," at which point we would start all over.  She is a little bit of a funny horse in that when she gets something in her head, she can get really irrational - she stops listening to reason and just shuts down.  I know she has hit this point when she starts shaking her head up and down violently, smacking her lips together (she will also sometimes do this a little when I first pick up the reins, which is a leftover panic-reaction from her first few non-racehorse rides under saddle, when they had a martingale on her that was way too tight... a little kick and a softening will usually stop this completely).  When she gets to this point, it's hard to get her to do anything productive.  At one point, she was shaking her head to violently and for such a long time that I just reached up and slapped her neck near her ears, which seemed to snap her out of it a bit, because she then gave in and started walking - right past the "terrifying" gate.  
At that point, she was so brain-fried that I went about 50 feet past the gate, turned around, and took her into the woods to walk back (I didn't want her thinking that she was allowed to turn and go back the way she came).  In the woods, she rolled her eyes at everything, and then, for no reason that I could think of (other than that she was being completely unreasonable and had stopped thinking completely), she got to the mouth of the woods, with the barn right in front of her, and tried to wheel around and run back into the woods.    So confusing.  I then convinced her to walk out of the woods, which she did on her tip-toes, and at that point, she finally relaxed and walked flat-footed on a loose rein, like a normal animal.. until I got off and ran up my stirrups, at which point she freaked out and tried to bolt for no apparent reason.  So, we went for a little hand walk around the property until she had her brain back in her head.  
Oh well.  No one died, and the fact that she eventually went where she didn't want to go when we were on the lane was a definite win.  We will be going on many more hacks by ourselves to get over whatever weirdness is going on.  

Day 20- Your favorite place to trail ride
Out west.  Obviously I've never done that on my own horse, but I always loved our rides at the Ranches.