Gia - session 40 - All in the arena now, no grain!

Since today was the first day of riding Gia in the arena with no warm up in the round pen, I decided to lunge her at the trot once in each direction, just to be safe.  I lunged her until she licked and chewed once in each direction.  Then, I hopped on with no problems at all.  I also opted to leave out the grain rewards and see how she did.  She was a little looky as we walked around the arena in each direction.  We had a light breeze blowing the trees across the road, and that seemed to make her a little nervous.  She startled a couple of times, but nothing too alarming.  I had to remind myself, that even though we have done this walk in each direction for several days now, she is still not comfortable, and still not ready, and still needs to take this time to walk around the arena and look at everything.  It's often hard to be patient about stuff like this, stuff that I think the horse should be ready to do by now.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.  They have to take the time it takes, and there are no shortcuts.

Once we had been around the ring each way at the walk, I asked her to trot.  She was quite willing to keep the trot for much longer than she has.  So, this time, I allowed her to keep the trot as long as she would.  When she quit, I asked her for 5 more steps, and then I asked her to walk.  The next time, I bumped it up to 6 more steps, etc, until we had done that 3 times in each direction.  She handled all of that perfectly, and kept up her trot for about 2 laps or so at a time.  She was starting to pull down on the reins a bit, so I have started to reprimand her about that.  Every time she does it, I give her a kick until her head comes up.  Most people try to correct this problem by pulling on the reins, but all that does is get you in a tug of war with the horse.  And an animal this large will always win a tug of war with a person ☺.  She seemed extra spooky in the far end of the arena today, so that is where I had her halt for me to dismount.  I did not dismount until she had relaxed over there though.  All in all, it was a good first time without the round pen!