My New Girl

This one might be a long one....

This weekend I got my new mare Desi. She is an 8yr old Appendix bay mare. She had 60 days of training as a 3yr old and then about a year ago went for a 30 day tune up. Other than that she has been ridden 2-3 times a year and gotten to enjoy the life of a pasture horse. She needed a job though and I needed a horse that was smart and could stand up to work.

Hopefully she will end up being my training/clinic horse like Apple.

We got back late Sunday night and she was exhausted. She is so out of shape! Yesterday afternoon I got her out for some groundwork/getting to know each other stuff. The paddock she is in attaches to the back of the barn. She isn't used to barns at all. She lead through fine but when I asked her to stop for a moment she got nervous and blew past me..... We had a LONG discussion about how that was not allowed and would not be permitted. So we went back into the barn and backed up and down the isle and let her investigate and realize that nothing was going to eat her.

I tied her to the hitching post and started brushing. She stood very quiet and patiently until I walked away. She started calling and moving around so I made her move and move and move until her attention was back on me. She isn't a very confident mare at all. This is something we are really going to have to work on.

After she was all clean we headed to the arena. She moved out nicely on the line but was WAY too interested in what everyone else was doing. We worked really hard on staying bent to the INSIDE and not sticking her nose to the outside. She isn't very free with her feet yet. When I ask her to back up she gets tense and shuffles back instead of stepping back. We worked until she was staying soft and bent the correct way. As we went to leave the arena, I opened the gate and she saw this as an opportunity to run through it. So we had to stand and wait and wait and wait until she wasn't nervous about the open gate.

I think she is going to be great though. She is a quick learner that just needs guidance and to understand the new rules.....like NO eating grass without permission.

The current plan is to get her out tonight and do more groundwork if she seems more calm and settled then I might ride. For right now riding is going to consist of warming up and cooling down with bending/flexing/moving shoulders and hips and working will be lots and lots of LONG trotting to get her fat butt into shape.