Day 2

Day 2 of Pony Boot Camp is in the books. I am off now to work today, then back home tomorrow afternoon to resume week 1. The tentative plan is to try for 5 days a week of pony outings now through fall. Sophie is 3 now, so I think it's reasonable that she have a schedule similar to Bridget's (except of course we keep things short and sweet for Sophie!) You can see from yesterday's picture that she's going through another big growth spurt, so obviously I won't be pushing for anything under saddle until she finds her own balance and matures more physically.

Anyway, today consisted of just walking down to the arena and reminding her of W/T/C cues in the round pen. Simple, yet this can be surprisingly difficult for young horses given it's a 15 minute walk down a surprisingly busy stretch of road, and away from all their friends.

I was proud of her for remembering her manners and leading decently, despite being quite up and spooky with all the things to look at. Of course the first vehicle to pass us was a loud truck with an ATV on a trailer behind it, but she was solid and remembers sharing the road with traffic last summer, it seems. She's actually braver than Bridget about a lot of things. Even though Bridget is quiet and doesn't react too much, she's not naturally confident and usually I am pushing her and providing the confidence, where Sophie's go to when she's unsure is to want to run over and investigate and take charge herself if she can.

Once at the club grounds, she was again feeling a bit anxious, but had no issues listening to me and I was quite surprised to find she's pretty solid with voice commands in the round pen...don't ask me how because I've yet to teach her to longe, and she's maybe been in a round pen 3 or 4 times for very short sessions.  Smart girl, or a mind reader. Or maybe a bit of both...I'm sure my body language tells her what I want and she's always watching me! I was especially impressed she was obedient to my requests for "whoa" and "walk" given she had plenty of energy to burn.

Fingers crossed, I'm still thinking I lucked out and got another good one :)

"Good pony!"