Just Me and Mom

Saturday was a busy day for our family. It was Hubby’s birthday, and him and Son, along with some other guys went to the AMA Supercross at Quest Field, so that left TX and myself with a day to fill with quality horse time.
We went out to Enumclaw to check out the “Extreme Trail Challenge” at V2Farms, we got some great trail obstacle ideas to try on all the girls, after that we went back to the barn to play with our horses.
It was to be the first day of actual riding for Diamond. I brought her in from the pasture while Sugar watched very inquisitively wondering what was up... it’s usually Sugar that gets brought out while Diamond stays in the pasture... We tacked her up, she didn’t fight the new metal bit at all, and looked cute as a button when we walked out of the barn down to the round pen.
One of the barn owner’s kids was mowing the grass and asked if he needed to stop so I could work with Diamond. I said “NO! Keep mowing that grass.” Mowing the grass is one of those everyday parts of life that Diamond will have to get used to, and I’d rather do it now than when I’m walking down a road to get to a trail and pass by someone while I’m in the saddle, so this was a perfect opportunity for Diamond to learn a valuable life lesson... Mowers don’t eat horses! Needless to say, she wasn’t convinced and basically refused to go on that side of the round pen, so I pushed her over there on her next time around and boy can that little girl buck! After she went around two or three times, she was fine with it and realized it wasn’t one of the horse eating varieties and we began our first lesson under saddle with a rider and no one leading her around.
She wanted to walk off when I stepped in the stirrup, and TX corrected her right away, which made me lose my balance and kick TX in the shoulder... (oops! Sorry!!) Once I was in the saddle, Diamond stood stone still really well, so I used some flexing exercises to get her moving while squeezing with my legs and she got it. She understood that meant to move which ever way her nose was being pulled. We walked around the round pen for about 15 minutes, we went both right and left, and through the center doing figure eight’s. She got it! She whoa’d and backed perfectly. I was quite impressed with my little girl! Guess all that ground work paid off.