More Riding

Sorry I don't have more pictures right now, got to get a photographer on the job!

Cloud continues to amaze and delight me. She has her pissy moments, but as soon as she realizes that it doesn't work on me, she turns and looks at me with the most intense energy.

I started out Friday in the front and so realized I needed the round pen to get her attention. Yet while we were out there I opened the trailer for her to check it out. We hadn't even looked at it in the two weeks she has been here. Well she popped right in without hesitation, sniffed about, turned to look at me and I said come on out, back in she went again and I let it go at that. She is ready to go someplace and see some new sights!

It was in the evening so Tresa was already in her stall. Cloud gave me a bunch of attitude on the way down the hill to the round pen, and I came to figure it was leaving Tresa behind. I had to come back up to get her bareback pad and she did the same thing again even though we had had a very nice join up just before. So she jumped about and I got her to move even more, especially up hill, toward where she wished she could go, and easy on her downhill. By the time we got to the round pen, she was walking very nicely beside me.

I stepped up on the stump and barely had to lift my hand and she sidled right over to pick me up. Definitely TDS! Today it took very little to ask her to go.  A little more to stop, but then again it was only the first day of stopping! She was very soft and willing really. I even tried to get some trot, which showed it self in a faster walk, so I accepted that for the time being.  Back up seems to be naturally flowing from the back up work on the ground. She was go good, I dismounted and went out and got back on and she took me up the hill to the barn. I did then ask her to leave the space in front of Tresa's stall and got some talk back then, but she did and we got all the way over  to the water trough.

In the play yard before the riding, she found some new obstacles to check out. I had put water in the sand box, which she looked at, but then walked right through! The larger water tank jump stopped her up a little. She just didn't know what she was supposed to do. Finally she put a foot on it, so I left on that nice try. But she was up on the tire and over the small logs and squeezing through the car wash just great.

Linda came by on Saturday a bit after we had some join up time in the round pen. We had other people playing with their horses and even a new horse in the field, which really was so interesting, that I had a hard time being MORE interesting. But we got there and so I rewarded that with going out and playing with the obstacles. Today on only the second send, she jumped that water tank, oh that is what you wanted me to do... Is third Day Syndrome going to become Second Day?

I decided today was the day to put on a saddle. I decided to start in the English saddle. A little trouble with finding the right length girth for her pot belly, but we managed. Today going back down the hill I had a partner walking down and not even a peep of the talk back of yesterday. Saddle was not even phasing her, stirrups loose even no problem. On I went and she was great. Moving off my energy almost, some turns even, but that big orange horse over there, that was a problem for her. One she didn't know and hadn't been able to establish an order with. So we tried to ignore him, but that was hard. Seemed like we needed to get out of that pen and really do some walking. So I had Trina come over, who was riding Chaco, Cloud's man, and we went walking. Now some of you know this, but Chaco can WALK! Which meant that we got a bit of a trot to keep up! Very nice. We went a couple of times around the round pen on the outside and Cloud on her own, turned away from that Shiny Black Butt and walked up the hill. Chaco came up to find us and we walked back down, all around the play yard, a couple of times and back to the round pen.

I then had to work a bit on line to get her mind back with me from all the excitement. I didn't want to leave her on the "what's out there" note, but "what do you want me to do next" look, which took a few minutes but we got it. And a stand still. With all the excitement she was finding it hard to stand still. We would move, I would ask, she would say not yet. Then when she acted like she was there, she would start the creep toward me. One step forward, two back missy  Cloud. I was going to untack her there, but there were too many other folks still riding to let her go there, So she carried it back up the hill and that was the end of that day.

Very fun ride.