I’m sad to say that it’s busy season at work and I’ve been terribly bad at recording our pony progress. But happily, I’ve squeezed some pony time in throughout the chaos. Three words describe the stolen time with my fuzzy buddy: so much goodness.
We’re back under saddle and he’s been just a surprising little dream boat. We had a few sticky moments but with our trainer, Claudia, on the ground (sometimes with a lunge whip for back up encouragement, sometimes not), he’s always come through those unsure moments with reasonable use of leg and input.
And excuse my giddiness over a usually mundane adventure for average equestrians, but we walked back to the barn under saddle from the arena on our last two rides! Eeeeeeee! The first time we took the adventure walk, we’d had a really good session under saddle. Fritzy was responding off the leg really well. Like totally got it AND understood the quiet-seat downward transitions exceedingly well. At the end, Claudia said “want to walk him back to the barn?” I gulped and nearly backed out like the chicken I am but she shooed us out of the ring before I could hop off and homeward we went! A few hundred feet and one teeny little flinch (that no one else would have noticed) later and we were back at the barn! I couldn’t believe my good luck. A fellow boarder was tacking up as we returned and snapped a picture of our very serious concentration down the home stretch.
To be honest, Fritz totally didn’t give a hootenanny that he was walking home with me on board. I was waaaay more concerned about it than he was. He totes doesn’t like birds and there have been flocks everywhere so I was thinking about the possibility of him spooking more than I ought to. I’m so silly because his spook is a flinch or quick side step, so really how bad is that? Over it. I’m so excited to realize that while maybe I don’t completely trust his every thought yet, with every ride we settle in. He trusts me more and more, and I him. Love this fuzzy bag of biscuits.
