Return of the scary white tarp thingie

So in an effort to bolster both my confidence AND Fiona's, we've spent 3-4 lessons in the last few weeks working on Fiona's archenemy, the evil white tarp thingie. Today, she touched it with her nose. That's a pretty huge leap forward. I think she's only a few more lessons from walking right through the thing. I might cry tears of joy when that happens. She is truly terrified of this thing...or she was. See my blog entry The Struggle with Strangles, third paragraph.

Just a quick update for today and hopefully I will be writing a "demise of the scary white tarp thingie" entry pretty soon. :) Night all!

Independence is Sweet!

Happy 4th of July everyone!!! I hope you are all cooking up a storm and enjoying the summer sun!

Fiona and I are doing really well! I even have video to prove it!! I walked her across the entire property last week and NO SPOOKS! Not one! She even put her nose on a horse trailer!...and then LICKED THE DARN THING! It was awesome, I doubled over laughing.

Today I was lunging her over a pole and she tried to roll it over with her nose and then chewed on it a bit. She's quite the character I tell you.

We've been working mostly on groundwork. We did have one ride last week because I hadn't been on her it a bit. She did pretty well. She thought about bucking at first with the saddle on, but she just thought it was too much work and stopped. I kind of like that she is chubby and lazy now. It is over 110 degrees here after all.

The groundwork lessons have helped immensely. I have realized that most of my fear was based on the fact that I didn't know what to do to get her under control if she flipped out. So we've just worked on controlling her feet, controlling her feet and more controlling her feet. It's REALLY helped. I feel much more confident with her on the ground. Our trainer moved a pole behind her a few weeks ago and Fiona shot forward, but I kept her head to me and she just turned her butt away and then stopped.  The best part about it was I never lost my cool. I didn't flip out and try to keep her moving...I just acted like nothing happened.

Drill team is on hold due to a injured instructor, so I am back to riding Fiona exclusively at the moment. I think it's probably for the best. She probably needs about 500 hours of riding before she can go out on the trail, so I better get cracking. I have started a riding log that I keep at the barn. It's very short so far, but it will grow. :)

So here's a little video of us working on the ground. Again this is not our finest work, but she is listening and she looks WAY better than when she had stranges a few month ago. Please forgive the nightgown look I am sporting, I am still transitioning wardrobe from 60lbs ago!!