One goal today: Calm!

 Today's ride was a good one! My one goal was to just keep her calm and not running today. And we accomplished that!

I tacked up at the trailer and she was good but a little nervous since the rest of the horses had stayed up at the arena part of the pasture. I opted to ride her up Jean's driveway instead of trying to get through the gates with the horses and plus, I just though it would be a good challenge. She was great. She even let me get on via the trailer. Although she does NOT parallel park as well as Dan. ;) We walked calmly all the way up to Jeans cabin and even when her interns started the car (electric so quiet and they were very respectful) she didn't react. However, when I tried to get the gate to the arena open, and then shut, she was a squirrely mess! She would not stand still long enough for me to get it. We finally got it open and got in and then she wouldn't stand to let me shut it. I got a little annoyed and in my efforts to get it shut, I accidentally swatted her with my whip! She scooted and then threatened to rear! But we finally got it sorted and got the gate shut. 

So obviously we started a little tense, but she quickly came down and we got some nice walks in. We didn't do the square or the riddle, but we did our serpentine zig zags (which is essentially the riddle stuff). She still was kind of holding her breath but she took a few shallow snuffles so yay. We even had some good clear answers to my inside leg where she also kept her rhythm! Good girl. So then we trotted. It started a little quick but I kept my post slow and kept calm and half-halted (a lot) but... she settled. We ended up with a much calmer ride overall, although there was still some extreme half-halting which I would have preferred not to have had to hold that much. But we got some really nice work in between too! She's even starting to think about stretching down to the bit. And when we halted, she stretched all the way down. Nose to the ground! I decided not to canter today. I figured that we would take the pressure off and end on a good note. Maybe the canter would have been better today too, but I just felt like it was a wiser choice to quit while we were ahead. So I did. 

But I did decide to do a cool off hack. We managed to get through the gate much more calmly and quickly this time. We walked all the way to the house pretty much on the buckle! Good girl! I tried to get a little bit of contact with her but still let her be soft and on the buckle. Once we got to the house she got a little tense and braced but she let me get her all the way to the lake. She's not a fan of down close to the lake and I think the troll bridge scares her! She probably would have been fine going on the road past the lake but when I made her go down towards the lake she got super jumpy. We managed it though and then we did a second pass and then we headed back home. Other than being a hair quick as soon as we turned for home, she settled nicely and we had a nice polite walk back. 

Then I grabbed a handful of treats and her target and we worked on targeting and the back ramp. I managed to get one foot in the trailer (not just on the ramp) and rewarded her. She got nervous at that point, so I decided to back off and just got her to get both front feet on the ramp for a reward and then we quit. She got rinsed and turned back out to hang with her pals.