Gia - sessions 1281-1284 more of the same, with a little excitement thrown in for good measure

 Gia’s Blog Jun15-19:

Gia enjoys being groomed by a new groom, Nyx!
This week there was a lot more of the same work for Gia. She continues to work well with the grooms and is becoming more and more accepting of multiple people handling/grooming. This is great news as we are in the midst of summer and bug season! As for the riding, I (Danielle) continue to work with Gia on increasing her trot minutes each day. We also work through her tension at the beginning of each trot set. Luckily, she is generally pretty quick to settle down into a routine and get to work. At the trot, I have been encouraging Gia to do more figures, shapes, and adding bend to her work. Friday proved to be a bit more exciting than I had planned, however. When I went to hop on Gia, her saddle started to slip as I put my foot in the stirrup. I had, of course, just tightened her girth prior to mounting, but I guess I could’ve gone a hole tighter! As I felt the saddle slip, I attempted to step down onto the mounting block, but instead, I slipped off the mounting block and fell on the ground scaring Gia. She took off running and bucking around the arena as her saddle continued to slip. It only took a few laps before Gia was willing to get caught, but I’m not sure I took a breath the whole time as I was worried about her destroying Heather’s saddle! Once I caught Gia and adjusted her tack, I immediately hopped right on. Apparently, Gia was not a fan of this plan and continued to do some bucking under saddling. She won this bout and I did come off. Gia tends to do things in mostly slow motion, however so I luckily wasn’t hurt at all. I did (for the third time) take Gia back to the mounting block immediately. It seemed after all that excitement, she was tired out and ready to be a good pony, because the rest of our ride was mostly uneventful (and did not involve me on the ground anymore). Next week, I am going to add in ground poles for Gia to trot over to keep her interested.

- Danielle

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