Gia - sessions 1301-1306 “Horses react appropriately while waiting for the human to get it right”…Monty Roberts, 1935-2026

Gia has definitely been getting used to our work the past two weeks. I do think she is getting a bit bored and when she gets bored, Gia finds a way to entertain herself. The challenge for me (Danielle) is to keep her interested and focused on me without allowing my body to react. 

For the week of July 20, 2026, we did a lot of the same work where I ask Gia to move her shoulder over to the left and to stretch over her back. When I am able to achieve that at the walk, I then encourage her to keep the stretch and pick up a trot. I noticed some tension returning to our work, but I was not able to pinpoint the cause. What I did feel is Gia was pulling me towards jumps or trying to speed up without me asking. While we are of course working on getting Gia to jump and canter again, it needs to be on my terms, not hers. I noticed that tracking left especially, Gia was trying to speed up. My goal for the week was to try to keep my body balanced and to work her through the challenge. By the end of the week, I was able to get some really nice stretch at the trot.

Last week was a short one for Gia. Heather and I actually took a few days off and went on a mini vacation to the Outer Banks (YES to see horses!). We were very intentional about NOT telling the horses we were going anywhere. You can call me crazy, but I promise you they know when we are gone. (Ask Amanda). 

We got back on Tuesday night and Gia and I were back to work Wednesday morning. Without a regular groom available on Saturday, I knew I would only have two days of work last week. Gia definitely made it known that she did not appreciate her days off. She is very schedule orientated and tends to get upset when her schedule is not followed. We also had a very bad storm Tuesday night so everyone was a bit anxious come Wednesday. Taking this into consideration, I went into Wednesday’s ride with low expectations and high patience. Good plan. For once, I was not surprised. Gia acted about as I expected. When it became clear that she was a bit more anxious, I mixed up the work and put heron a lot of small figures. I, personally, have a really bad habit of getting stuck on a path on the rail. It is something that I try to work on, but honestly, I ride on my own multiple horses a day multiple days a week and I know I forget to mix it up when I’m working on other things. I try to remind myself to envision Heather telling me that I’m putting her to sleep on the rail! Some horses are pretty consistent working on the rail. They may get bored but do not express it. My horse, Ali, is one of these such horses. Gia is not. Gia entertains herself and I need to do better. (Ali would appreciate it, as well!). 

On Friday, Gia and I started working and things seemed to be going well. However, a few minutes into our ride, I again fell into the habit of sticking close to the rail. While I had Gia’s attention, she was behaving well. When she got bored, she looked around. What she saw was that we had a very large party tent set up in the yard for the annual Pig Pickin’. (If you missed it, come out next year!) We have a wonderful neighbor who works for a party planning company and for the first time ever, Castle Farm, had a professional tent and set up. It was amazing and the horses had seen these tents set up before, but not here. With Gia, she doesn’t always spook when scared: she bucks. It is her go-to move when anxious. I am happy to say I have gotten much more confident riding through her “moments”, but they are not always fun. I appreciate Gia making me a better, more aware rider. I just wish she chose other ways to communicate. We did work through the issues and get her focus back on me, but she was much more on edge, and I focused on getting a few steps of each thing before I did a transition to keep her paying attention to me. 

These two weeks gave me things to think about and work on. I look forward to listening to Gia next week and helping her learn and improve. I will keep Monty Roberts’ words in my head while I do better. RIP to an incredible horseman.

- Danielle B