Professional Photographer in the Making

Well, today was just awesome. I went to work from 7 to 1 and then rode my bike to the farm and played with Misty while my friend took pix for her college photography class. As soon as she sends them to me I will share . My goal with Misty was to not rush her. My friend was in a time crunch, but I did not care. I just flowed with the go and pretended like we had all the time in the world. I had a very intense catching game. I moved very little and she moved a lot and I definitely felt that she was drawn more strongly to me. I started by directing her 30' away to a ball that was about 50' from her. She caught my drift pretty quick and we had a good time playing with it at liberty. She was really talking to me, today. When I was putting her halter on, I knelt down and she put her head down. I would give it a 9.8 out of 10 for willingness. I think that if I would have gotten the halter on and then taken it off she may have left, but I am not sure. She followed me to the 23' line and we put that on and did some falling leaf and figure 8's around a barrel. She has recently been having problems backing up with the yoyo (past few sessions) and I sense that it is a confidence thing, so we quietly worked on that for a bit and I got a much better yoyo.

I went to a barrel and stood on it and beckoned her with the tiniest finger gesture and she sidepassed to me. Right then I lost my balance a bit and the barrel began to roll backwards. I just slowly kept walking it back until I could rebalance myself...and Misty chased me sideways as I rolled away. Lol...so! I am on Misty now and I just kinda let her talk to me about how she was feeling. She was feeling pretty up today so I just gently began to sculpt her into maneuvers as she went at her own pace (a really nice trot). I had her to a haunches in circle, a shoulder out circle, some spins, some halfpasses and sideways at all the gaits. I also experimented with her in the trot asking for different heights and speeds and changing the front end's speed but not the back end's and visa versa. It was very nice--good stuff!

Then I hopped off and took her through what we call Middle Earth to the back pasture. It was her first time out there since the grass has been here, so I took it slow as we left the other horses. I waited out the thresholds she showed me and let her eat a lot. Regardless, by the time we got back there, I had to tell my friend that I would not be riding because Misty was not rideable, but that she could get some great action shots of her playing on the ground. So, I played with Misty on the ground, matching her adrenaline-fueled jumps and star-bursts. After about 3 minutes though...oops got to go, my mom is honking!

Natural Horsewoman Out.