Monday, February 3, 2014

Update!! Sherwood is... horrifying in an indoor. After our amazingness on the trailer three weekends ago, we made an appointment to bring her for a lesson in an indoor in the quest to get her off the property and ready for showing this summer. So, two Mondays ago, we loaded her up (without an issue!) and drove her 5 minutes down the road to the H/J barn. They had me "try out" on a young TB lesson horse before they'd allow me to bring Sherwood to their normally busy indoor, in order to gauge my ability to handle a young scared athletic mare. Well, good call, peeps!

This fricking mare was... controlled chaos in motion! She wanted out of that place so bad. Wouldn't stand for the mounting block, trying to run me over everywhere, refusing to turn away from the gate by threatening to rear and shake me off, kicking at the instructor! I'm pretty sure my instructor either thought I was a moron or a pathological liar. All I had to fall back on was that she'd watched me ride the horse she trained (my tryout horse) and do a fair job of it. At the end, she left it at, "Well, you handle her well and you're well matched. She's fast, you're faster, she's tricky, and you've shown up to learn tools. I think you'll be okay with her, but she definitely needs more miles." And then Sherwood tried to kick her. Again. And all I could say, as I'd been saying the entire 45 minute lesson was, "I'm so sorry, she's never done that before." SNAFU, much? LoL

In retrospect, Sherwood was totally manageable- she never reared, she never did anything but shake her head and stomp her feet and slam on the brakes. I've ridden through far FAR worse than that. And by the end, we actually got a full half-round of the arena at a trot. So... progress was made.

AND I dragged her butt onto the trailer this weekend to ride in the outdoor at Bohemia, which was much more slick than I thought it would be, so we didn't do much, but she trailered there very well, she stood for a VERY awkward ground mounting (OMG, if I was her, I'd have run away), and walked and trotted around like a pro. After a minor blow-out in the parking lot about her being ADD and me asking her to pay attention.

Fantastic Miss Mare. We had to cancel our 2nd lesson in the indoor this afternoon due to 7 inches of snow, but we can't wait to get back there ASAP!

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