If At First You Don't Succeed . . .

It was sharply windy and somewhat cold yesterday - low 40sF but colder with the wind - so Maisie and I groomed where the barn gave us some protection. While we were there, Bob (the naturally tailless) barn cat came out to enjoy the sun too:

Maise loves cats, and especially likes to gently snuff-a-whuff their fur; Bob was not concerned as he knows how gentle she is about it:

(Thanks to our wonderful barn lady for the excellent cell-phone pictures!)

I rode briefly - I should have lunged first but didn't. We walked around a bit on the trails close to the barn, and although Maisie was well-behaved, she was wound pretty tightly, so we made our way back to the barn and did some simple exercises on the field behind the barn - circles, serpentines, leg-yields, turns on the haunches, backing. She relaxed a little bit, but not enough to do much more, so I called it a day.

Today we tried again. It was a little bit warmer and a little bit less windy. After we groomed, we did some lungeing - we worked on walking, trotting and halting on voice commands (I haven't done this with her before but she picked it up immediately). Then we did some precision transition work, where I would ask her to trot only a few steps before walking a few steps and so on. We also did some direction changes.

Then we worked in the arena. First I placed a stack of 4 red traffic cones on a fence post. Then, after I mounted, Maisie and I rode up to the cones and carried them one at a time and dropped them at various points in the arena. She'd never done this before but did great - she didn't mind my picking up and holding the cone at all. Then we did some trotting sets - very few straight lines so she couldn't build up momentum - lots of circles and serpentines using the cones as focus points. It was pretty good - I did almost all the trot work in sitting trot, which seems to help her not get too excited. She was distracted at some points by my daughter riding Dawn in the arena, but managed to cope.

Finally, as a reward (I hope she thought it was a reward!), we took a short trail ride. We didn't get too far from the barn, but took a loop she hadn't taken before. Other than some tension due to a yapping dog, she did very well. She wanted to speed up heading back, but was able to respond when I asked her to slow, stop or back.

Much better than yesterday!