The Poetess and I took a step back, and moved forward in other directions this past month. It began with canter troubles popping up to the right when longeing in the bridle. A very frustrating session of Poetess getting most of the way around the circle and then stopping dead from a canter, lap after lap after lap. She'd been doing really well when this seemed to pop up for no reason. The next session, she was fine again and in fact gave me the most awesome canters she's ever done in each direction. But after a handful more sessions, here came the canter tenseness and stopping issue again. So I decided to stop longeing off the bridle and go back to longeing just from the halter without even having her wear the bridle.
That was the 'step back'. Going back to just a halter when longeing, I decided to do a longer amount of pole work in each session. We warm up doing all three gaits without them, then spend about five minutes in each direction going over poles at walk and trot. I even added a third pole to the circle, one stride from our original pole. So on one half of the circle she steps over a single pole and on the other half she has to do two poles in a row. That has gotten her a bit less distracted and more focused on longeing rather than outside the arena--all the falling leaves have opened up views into the woods and brush near the arena that she didn't notice during the summer--as well as having her stretch through her back more and regulate her tempo.
We also had a stretch of quite a few rainy days that made the sand arena rather deep and I didn't want to longe her in it for fear of inducing injury to her legs. Some of those days we just hand walked around the arena and over the poles.
Something I learned, or rather, was confirmed during the wet spell is that Poetess doesn't mind the wet weather; she likes to play in puddles and roll in the mud. So, there's been lots of time spent grooming, especially on days the arena was too wet to work in at all, or my breath isn't good enough to walk out there and back with her.
We've also spent time bonding via hand grazing as well as practicing being caught. She's getting better at seeing me and walking to me rather than standing and 'allowing' me to walk to her. In fact, in late October, for the first time ever, she saw me come through the gate to her pasture and she ran to me!!
That was such an awesome thing to see: my horse recognize me and willingly come to me rather than just stopping and waiting somewhat grudgingly for me to come to her.
Her winter coat has come in a lot, and her dapples are gone. But I don't mind, as her winter coat is darker than what she'd bleached out to in the summer and that makes her little bitty star of white hairs more prominent on her forehead. Honestly, I'd forgotten she even had a star!
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