Today started out interesting! Duck was in her stall again because of the heat. When I went to brush her in the stall I realized that her latch is very bent, pretty much broken and was rigged shut with a carabiner and a chain as well as the very top piece of wood missing from her bottom dutch door. When I went in the stall I realized as she was munching her hay that her feet suspiciously had white paint on both front hooves (her door is painted white). Now I am wondering if she tried for a jailbreak! Hmmm, interesting. I pulled her out and put on her bareback pad and checked her out. No lameness or anything.
So today was AWESOME for lack of a better word! Duck is now comfortable with me in at least zone 4 for driving. It is far from perfect but she is comfortable with me there and will walk forward! Turning still isn't so great but it is coming along. I decided to go try and find the employees at the barn to see if either of them knew what happened to Duck's stall. No luck, they didn't know what had happened!
Anyway in that quest I played with sending Duck into the main barn and then also played with sending her into the wash stalls. The washstalls all have crossties and that is where everyone else tacks up their horse. Duck didn't want anything to do with it at first, but we played with it. We ended with her feeling decent about it backing in and with more confidence being sent in but she didn't like to stay. More to play with later. We also walked through the barn to help get her used to it!
We headed to the arena where I decided to turn her loose! I wanted to see if she would stick to me and do some stuff! I am totally laughing (my fault) because when I ask her to go sideways she thinks I want zone 4 to come TO me (we did that twice at the old barn) and she swings her but in my face (we did backing by the tail twice I think?)! Ok so I went with it! We did backwards from zone 5 with me holding her tail at liberty! She didn't want to do sideways she kept coming towards me so I went with it some more and we got some full circles with the driving game! 2-3 of them! Then I took off and she followed and I sent her over 2 small crossrails! It was SO much fun!!!! I am so happy even though it isn't perfect she is sticking to me in a large arena! Yeah!
Then we went to riding. Again I put the savvy string around her neck along with wearing the hackamore. I was very impressed that it seemed mostly to take a lot less effort for her to move with my seat and the savvy string! Not perfect but not as much pressure as yesterday either and I didn't have my carrot stick on me like I usually do! So we just played with going certain direction, some transitions walk, trot, halt etc. We even got one canter loop (to the grass of course) which is in the corner of the arena she almost didn't stop at the arena fence! I think she thought I was asking her to jump! Mental note: make sure to stop riding sooner so she can slow down!
All in all it was a great fun day of play in less than 2 hours! Whew! Can't wait for more fun tomorrow!
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