Popsicles and carrots

It is HOT!!! It's fun to stay cool in the barn with the horses though!

Yesterday I got on Xena with my friend's saddle. It actually fits her rather well, so I'll borrow it till I get the shimming on mine figured out. We warmed up hard so we could ride soft. Even though it was hot. We played with a plastic bag, which I tied to the end of the savvy string. She hasn't seen one of those in a while. She was skeptical at first, but lots of approach and retreat later and I played extreme friendly game with it! She let me swing it above her head and over her back into the saddle. :D I got on and for the first time asked for some steering while playing point to point with carrots on buckets. She was.... well she was a little sticky. I wasn't surprised though. Turning before she was mine never was her strong point. But we've done loads of porcupine and following a feel on other parts of her body.... tail, legs, neck, etc. Just not from on top of zone 3. Insert proverbial to-do list!

I had two buckets out there, and a pocket of carrots. And for those of you who read how I nearly lost my finger from feeding her a carrot in April, I still don't feed her from on top of her. So I was chucking carrots on to the buckets hoping that she'd find them. She got most of them. Her back up was still incredibly light, so I stopped her by lifting my one rein after she had eaten all the carrots to be found. She enjoyed that game for a while. Then we both got a little too hot so I brought her back into the barn.

She wasn't perfectly light on the lateral flexion rein, so after this ride I decided that because sh'es so good with her driving game, I'd start riding her with the carrot stick to back up my ideas.

The rest of the day I gave her some carrots in the barn aisle while I sat on her back and ate popsicles to cool off. It was a pretty nice bonding experience.