This past weekend was a bit more smooth. I was able to go to bed at a decent hour on Friday night and got up around 7 to head to the barn. I got there around 8:30 and set to work on the dirty, hairy horse! Oh, and I cross-tied her normally, rather than with a single tie like I had been doing, and she stood stock still the entire time. Problem solved -- easy enough.
I tacked her up and took her out to lunge her. She was lazy until I kicked a little dirt at her. She started to buck once, changed her mind and continued on. Oook, just kidding. When I mounted, she was perfect...again. No tension at ALL. Wow. I really like this. If you've never gotten on a horse whose entire back tenses as soon as you put your foot in the stirrup, I'm not sure if you can truly appreciate how nice it is to mount a "normal" horse, lol. And Miss Promise, for some reason, is acting like one of those normal horses. Woot, it only took 11 years to get there!
I think I rode for close to an hour. Mostly in a circle at the top of the arena, because I had misjudged my timing and the therapy kids came in about 1/2 way through my ride. No biggie, we are circlers.
She was really good, a little hot at times, but just generally well behaved and willing. Afterwards, I gave her a bath. So, now she's a clean, hairy horse. She wasn't so good about the bath -- turns out she had to pee, but she was given a 15 minute break to hang out in her stall between untacking and her bath to do so! Silly mare. After her bath, when she wouldn't graze because the grass was too short, I walked her across the river. Hell, I was already wet, might as well. She walked right across without even a little bit of hesitation, and no whip (not even carrying one).
Yesterday, I went out a little later in the afternoon -- I had asked my boyfriend to go with me to help me get her across the river, but he didn't end up going with me. Since she'd been so good the day before and was being good in the stall, I decided I was going to get on without lunging her. She tensed a little, but it didn't last long, and she walked off without any tension at all. --insert ear-to-ear grin here--
I didn't ride nearly as long, since we'd worked pretty hard on Saturday, and I figured if I was sore, she must be a bit sore also. (Although, I am 2 holes from not needing the girth extender anymore!! Proof of weight loss!!) And even though my boyfriend hadn't ended up going with me, I really still wanted to get her across the river with me on her. I tried to walk her down there, and was really determined, leg on hard to keep her going, but she said no and started to work herself up and wouldn't budge. I was having flashbacks to our early showing days. She annoyed me to the point that I made her stand still, dismounted and dragged her (not too literally, lol) to the river and made her cross it. Then I came back and looked unsuccessfully for a crop or a whip that wasn't so long I'd get us all tied up in it. I only found a lunge whip. That wasn't going to work so good.
I finally grabbed a sturdy branch off the ground, broke the littler branches off, and remounted. Make-shift crop (have I mentioned I don't own one anymore? And I am *not* going to buy one just for this, lol). Yay!
Hmm...I guess even a branch in my hand, never even touching her, is enough to get her to walk down the slope without being a wench.
She started to veer off as we got close to the edge, so I reached back and tapped her butt twice. She sighed and stepped in with both front feet, dropped her nose to smell the water and walked across when I squeezed her. She stopped on the other side, turned on the forehand and walked right back across.
I walked her up the slope toward the arena, then made the descent back to the water from another angle. She tried to veer again, tap, tap and she walked right in and across - tried to turn immediately at the other side, but I squeezed her and made her walk up the trail a few feet before turning and walking back toward home and calling it a day.
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