Maybe I don't suck

 Thank you God for giving me back my semi-sane unbroken but kinda broke horse. ;) I rode Fun buns today and she was much calmer and saner and "broke". 

We walked up to the arena and then I did our pillar walking on the scary corner side. I made sure I rewarded and gave her treats in that corner. Duh... associate that corner with good things! I almost got on in that corner but decided that it would be a corner of good things and perhaps getting mounted isn't necessarily a good thing. 

We walked a good bit and she was brave. She was all alone as Dan stayed in the shade in the barn as did the others and Jean's horses were getting shod so... just us. And she was brave. She only spooked hard once. I have no idea why but it was at the corner near Jean's roundpen so... who knows. We picked up the trot and she was much better today. Back to her usual self - zoomy! And no more crow hopping or bucking. We did a lot of trotting and focused on getting her to slow her roll. I tried my hardest not to hang on the reins which meant we had to do some trot walk trot transitions and we did have one moment of "You will give and then I will soften". Which, I'm not proud of, but... I don't know. Maybe that's how you do it? I guess I could have been softer and spent more time getting her to have a better concept of contact and giving. Guess that's on the books. But... we had some really good moments. She got glimpes of fancy pony and started to soften. I was able to give the reins and keep her on a very light soft contact and we were able to get some decent circles too. 

She picked up the right lead before I asked but I had been thinking about it so I rolled with it. And it was a lovely soft round canter. Almost too lovely. I sort of questioned what was happening. Ha ha. We went to the left and it was a bit of a struggle but we did get it. She did buck once or twice but it wasn't like it had been. We did both leads a second time and she bucked once more. So.. progress. We finished with some nice trot work and a halt. And then we also worked on standing still at the gate instead of assuming it's already open and barging through or not waiting for me to reach down and get it. Silly girl! We hacked back via the pasture because it was hot and she had worked hard and was sweaty.

 

I'm so grateful to God that she's feeling better. I suspect that we don't need to inject her fetlocks but it's hard. I can't quite tell if she's truly sound because she's so squirrely and still rather feral. But on the flip side, I hate to assume some of her issues under saddle are behavioral/greenness if they are pain related. Like.. is the zooming an effort to get rid of pain? But she lunges so nice. Sigh... I don't know. She's definitely not as fit as she should be for stifles too so I guess I'll have to start taking her and ponying her with Dan some. That will help me get two ponies hacked at least. I can always still ride her at home too. I'll just have to be careful about it. 

But... definitely an improvement from the last ride and I didn't end up in tears. And I stayed on. And she seemed to have fun too.