My Friday Part 1

Well this is the first thing I saw when I rolled out of bed Fri morning, I knew it was going to be a beauty day and decided right then I was going to have a productive .......Horse Day...... I have been saying that for weeks so coffee made and drank, chores done ...now just wait for them to finish eating and away we go.
I started with Moxie this time I have been skipping over her because she has a lot of riding under her girth now, the problem with that is it's just that riding? Let me start from the beginning if you get lost or just plain bored I'll understand.For those of you that may not remember or weren't along for the journey Moxie is a Morgan Mare that I had sold about 2 yrs ago or there abouts. When Moxie went to her new home she had just been started under saddle. She had a month of pro training and then back to me. I have to say I was not too happy with her progress (just to get a bit off topic Moxie is a bit of a strange horse she has funny little quirks mostly not too annoying or at least I don't think so) Ok back on topic, so inspite of her quirks I was expecting great things from her, I was sadly disappointed and not to cast aspersians on anyone I don't think it was entirely the fault of the horse. At any rate we had to make the best of the situation. When Moxie came home from training she had good forward motion - walk - trot - lope, she moved on the diagonal some, she almost had her leads and she had an ok stop well sort of and very little back up.I only had a few rides on her before she went to her new home.

I was happy about where she was going because I knew the man who shall be known as J and I knew she would have a good home where she would have a job......riding .....riding and more riding and also some driving(she is now a driving horse as well) Anyhow I thought everything was good for the pair I even went on a few rides with them and saw first hand how she was treated(Good) a long period of time went by and I heard a few grumblings here and there about Moxie not working out. The deal on this horse was if you don't want her anymore she comes back to me, so low and behold after all this time you guessed it Moxie's home. To make a long story short......Moxie in some ways knows less than when she left and more in other areas....to get to the point it is almost like starting over from scratch. Anyhow Friday morning Moxie and I started over in the arena, here she is ready to go ....look at that Morgan pose, she does that on her own always has.....pride in type I guess. Here are some on board shots.

We started off well she was happy ears up wanting to please. We did the usual boring stuff...warming up. We did a bunch of direction changes and I got to see where she really is......she has some good turns all to the right she has a decent stop and a very hesitant back up.

she remembers very little leg cues and takes exception to them.

In this shot you can tell from the body language she isn't to happy with the request to give to the left,ears pinned and fighting me all the way. She grabs the bit in the corner of her mouth everytime you ask for her to give anything to the left. Even though she's fighting it you can see her neck is starting to curve the way it should.....just barely.

I guess she got tired when she realized we were going to keep at it, she softened considerably and started listening a bit.

This is not a very good shot, she actually gave to the rein and had a pretty good bend to the left. It was at this point I decided to call it quits ....on a good note. She didn't give me all I was hoping for but at least she made the effort...we have a lot of work ahead of us . Sorry if I don't use the proper terminolgy but I never said I was a trainer .....so I don't have to LOL

So to finish off her lesson she gets to stay tied while I go onto other things. If you are interested there will be a part 2 soon.