I've not posted anything for about a month. Been busy with family matters, recently my father-in-law died and I have been gone for a few weekends in a row. My blog today has to do with being gone and returning. Since I have been back Zoe has been pretty good. Only one crazy thing...see words at the end of blog. Rides out have been great. No pent up emotional outbursts on the trail. When she was younger I would have expected that. But I guess Zoe being almost 10 years old is working in my favor. Recently I went met some people from work for a trail ride. It was their first time out on our trials on their horses-one of them had been out running on the trails, but got lost. Anyway they were late getting to our meeting place. We met across the street from FLEC. While we were waiting we worked on our arena lessons. There is a nice circular area there and it made for a good place to practice collection, moving off my leg in a large circle. We were able to move towards the center of the circle and then move back out on the circle-at a walk and a trot. We did figure 8's. We practiced sidepassing. There were even some puddles and we could practice walking thru them. Sometimes we stopped working and looked at the scenery. Sometimes she thought she needed to pay attention to the horses in the pasture next to us, which was ok if we were stopped and resting, but not ok if we were working. Darn those ears give her away every time!!! So we could practice paying attention to me. It didn't take too much work to get her focused back on me. Anyway I was happy that she went to work for me and she didn't paw the ground being impatient. And it had been a while since we had been out on the trials due to my recent traveling plans. I went to lessons last Tuesday evening and it was raining. We did lessons anyway. At first Zoe was a little irritated with the rain, but once we went to work she was fine. I rode part of the lesson in my oilskin rain coat. It was a bit bulky but once I went to work it was no longer a concern for me....until I started loping. I was getting hot so I took it off. Zoe did good for the lesson and didn't mind the large coat I was wearing. Yesterday I had her out in the arena. I was going to lunge her, put the lunge line on her and she took off. I just let her go, no sense holding on to that rope. I took the rope off her and free lunged her for a while until I could tell she had blown off her energy. I guess the recent rains and cooler weather finally got to her. Anyway after she had been run around for a while and I could tell she was paying attention to me we tried the lunge line again. She did great. Even asked for a canter and she gave me a slow collected canter. She's never done it collected before. Hmmmmm.
So all in all.....my Zoe is doing ok.
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