Her Royal Spotted Highness

The Kingdom of Mare today was fan-tab-u-lous!  A perfectly beautiful fall day, the leaves beginning to turn, temps in the mid-seventies.  I do love Autumn.  Journey continues with ground work, but I started this session online in the roundpen, and then once that was going like greased lightening I removed the rope halter and started moving her with hand signals.  SHE IS GETTING IT!  She isn't thrilled....but she does comply with the "invisible rope".  We practiced loading in the trailer and she's getting calmer in there.  Still not ready to stay put for very long, but definitely improving and we are pretty low key, so that is good as well.  Then under saddle and working on refining her steering in the S-Hack (won't try a bit until I have my trainer's guidance to be sure I approach it correctly, tired of re-learning stuff done wrong initially).  She is starting to catch on to the S-Hack!!! I've worked very hard the past two weeks on trying to make my signals more subtle and try to find the "try" with the least bit of pressure I can.  I'm now getting a whoa with the seat of my pants, and a slight lift of the rein 100% of the time at the walk, and pretty darned good (though a tad sluggish) at the trot.  She is also beginning to catch the curve of the verbal whoa on the ground sessions. We worked through the obstacle course this evening, turning around every cone, every upside down bucket, weaving in and out of the ground poles, bending every chance we get and something finally clicked and she was getting it.  She has started backing up now with a light see-saw on the reins.  We need more work on the back up.  It is very sluggish, but I'm not yanking on her, trying again to get it with the least effort possible.  Journey also was trotting a large diameter circle this evening and moved off my leg for the first time as we made the bend.  She's smart, and she's starting to get it.  I'm so excited!!!  ~ E.G.