Gia session 42 - free lunging in the arena

Today I decided to start out with some free lunging and natural horsemanship in the arena.  That would give Gia a chance to check out all the things she is scared of without me on her, plus it would help her work on focusing on me despite those things, and it would get her tired at the same time (thus less likely to take off or buck).  We definitely accomplished all those things.  She started out very full of herself, and alternated between running around the arena and stopping to eat the grass.  I had Dylan come in to give me a hand, because it's a lot of ground to cover when I'm trying to keep her moving.  He stood at one end of the arena, with me at the other end, and between us, we just kept her moving until she decided she was ready to be more humble by lowering her head and licking and chewing.  We worked her once in each direction, and then I went to get on.

Luckily, I had not gotten on yet when a dog started chasing the ducks around.  Gia was quite nervous about it, and pranced around for a minute, but then she settled and I got on.  I did keep my eye on both the dog and the ducks for the rest of the ride, and so did Gia.  They started to run around one other time, a few minutes after I had gotten on, so I hopped off quickly, but I don't think Gia even noticed them that time.  She stayed pretty quiet, and the rest of the ride was pretty uneventful.

Once we had walked around the arena once in each direction, we started to work on the trot.  Anytime she tried to look at something outside the arena, I wiggled the opposite rein to get her attention back on me.  At the trot, she kept going for about 1/2-3/4 of the arena.  When she stopped, I would ask her to trot again for a predetermined number of steps, and then I would ask her to walk.  Her trot is slow right now, but the main focus is that she keeps doing what I tell her to do until I tell her to stop.  When she gets more confident with that and with her surroundings, then I can work on speeding the trot up.

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