Yesterday, after I did my zone 1 for 35 mins, I hopped on Z and did about 8 miles. We did a lot of walking and just relaxing. It's nice how she manages to stay in a walk on the steep declines. Some horses will fall into a trot downhill but Z controls herself and uses her hind end well. This is new for her. After a while, I started asking her for transitions. We worked on walk/trot transitions and they were getting better. They are not nearly as nice on the trail as in the arena. She has much, much more forward-ness on the trail. She wants to go fast always. She'll go slow when I ask, but she prefers fast! At one point, we came upon a log and she does NOT like to step over things if she can avoid them. So, I asked her to cross the log. Of course, she had to do this massive leap to get over this 6 inch high log. I laughed and asked her again. And again... until she could calmly and thoughtfully step over the log. I feel pretty certain that it will take several sessions to get her to calmly step over things like that.
It was a nice ride and I really enjoy riding Z without a pony-horse. It gives us a chance to get together and I can focus only on what we're doing. We got rained on on the way home! :-) Not complaining, it made me laugh.
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