Samantha Thorning with Aspen, (On Line, 90 mins) I brought the puppies and their pen with me to the barn today not thinking that it would cause every horse to go RBE when they saw it. Aspen was all kinds of worried and snorty over it, so for about 20 minutes we played with approach and retreat with the use of a forward/backing in a turn pattern. Pretty soon she got real calm, started thinking about the pattern and less about the puppies, and was able to just chill out.

I brought her into the arena with plans to improve both of our skills with the 45' line. She was totally awesome and has a great backup and sideways to the end of the rope with my feet staying still. We did a few laps of F8 and then went into the pasture and played with traveling circles, changes of direction, and backing all the way up to the arena and through the gate from 45' away. I am SO excited and impressed with how much blowing out and stretching was happening while doing circles at the trot and canter on the 45'. :) :) Can't wait to play with it again tomorrow!!!


Samantha Thorning with Aspen, (Liberty, 15 mins) Saw Aspen yesterday but the weather was going to storm so I just brushed her and fed her her grain while protecting our little herd of two from the other horses. Cleaned out her feet at Liberty but really had to play with the right hind (the injured leg). Over the past few months I've really reinforced NOT to pick up that leg no matter what I'm doing to it - removing bandaging, washing, or applying meds. So now she refuses to pick her hoof up for cleaning. So at Liberty we played with that - it made it interesting for me to find a way to keep her feet still and not have her walk away from me while I tried to pick up her leg. Once she finally relaxed and allowed me to pick up that hoof I gave her a good rub then began moseying toward the water tank. She followed me there, took a drink, then followed back, she was so sticky to me that I then did some HQ/FQ yields, and sideways, then did some Z5 driving at Liberty with all the other horses around out in the open. It was AWESOME. :) We've only played with it two or three times OL so I was very impressed how responsive she was at Liberty! :) :) Aspen is so wonderful! Had some great backing by the tail and Spanish Walk too! Yay for Aspen! ♥