Gia - session 49 - No riding after a hurricane!

So, for those of you that aren't from around here, we had a hurricane pass through yesterday and last night and it was still a bit windy this morning.  Needless to say, all the horses were a bit hyped up today, and I was definitely not up for riding Gia.  I did work with her however, we just did some lunging in the round pen.  I had her work on being more response to the voice cues of "walk", "trot" and "canter".  She was a bit stubborn in the beginning.  The round pen has quite a bit of grass growing in it, and she really wanted to stop for a snack.  She got a bit pissy at first when I asked her to trot, so I had to fuss at her and make her work a little harder.  She figured out pretty quickly that she needed to have a better attitude.  Once we got that straightened out, she was very good at picking up the trot on command.  It took a few tries for her to come back to the walk on command, but she was doing that eagerly by the end.  It also took a few tries to pick up the canter on command, without having an attitude, but she also figured that out pretty quickly and was very responsive and obedient to it all by the end. 

Once she had completed that task, I brought her back to the barn to work with the clippers again.  I used the twitch on her again this time, but when I turned the clippers on, she seemed much less nervous than she did last time.  I proceeded to clip her muzzle hairs, and as soon as Danielle and I felt her relax even more, I turned off the clippers, pulled off the twitch and let her have some grass.  It's not my favorite way to go about this, but I do believe it is helping her realize that the clippers aren't going to kill her. ☺

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