Best ride so far, with that "Do nothing" tool

I haven't ridden Mara for 2 weeks. I haven't even done much of anything with her, because I was so freaked out about her lameness. So she sat around here and ate hay until she went straight from a 5 to a body condition score 6, complete with back crease, in 2 weeks. Ugh. To me, a 5 is too fat.


But I believe horses should eat almost continuously, so I just kept stuffing the slow-feeder hay net full and letting her become the Butterball Turkey. I religiously cleaned her hooves, twice per day, I thought it was something in her hooves.

A lady over at Herr S said she thinks it's something in her shoulder, how Mara doesn't want to bend to the left, only to the right. This might be seen in the videos I have thanks to my man coming up to Herr S's today and taping her.


Mara says, "Good grief, what with all the extra tack today. I wanna get moving!"


I tell my man, "I'm not really sure what I'm doing but I know not to get tangled up in the lines on the ground!"





This is my favorite picture. It looks like my man was trying to get the shadow of Mara. She's moving better, much better, otherwise I wouldn't have continued to lunge her more than 3 minutes.

Link here

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I saw such improvement, I thought I could ride today, and did some homework from our last lesson, which was 2 weeks ago. My husband was there to tape us, because I am having trouble sensing if Mara is crossing over with her hind legs on a leg yield or not. From this video he took, it looks like she did it slightly 3 times out of like 10 steps. Slightly, so I had to slow the video down to 1/3 speed to see the back legs just barely cross each other.

I did a little work on asking Mara to give to contact, and not letting her drop behing the vertical. It was tough after 2 weeks, but we had a bit of an understanding today. I am starting to develop a very sensitive feel with her mouth.

After my man was frozen solid from standing there recovering from the flu, with the camera, I thanked him and he walked home. I wanted to take Mara out for the first time in 2 weeks, and perhaps even get on her.

There is this little loop in the woods that I'm trying to make Mara's "comfort zone loop" because it's so close to home. Today I decided I should try to do that simple loop backwards. Another direction could be a challenge. Mara kept trying to eat grass and shrubs on the way as I led her down, and eventually I realized she was so calm, I should just get on her.

BTW, this has gone badly before. Before, when she seemed so calm, as soon as I got on her, she'd switch into hyperalert mode, just cuz I was on her back.

I knew this but I wanted to try.

I got on, and decided right then that I would not use my legs on her whatsoever on this entire ride. No matter what.

It was odd, cuz soon I realized, I usually require a horse to walk along at a marching pace, with the notion that lazy walkers are bad, never let that happen. (Also, Princess Buttercup had such a miserable walk, I almost never rode her at a walk. I would just get off and she'd shuffle along trying to keep up with my walk. Then I'd get on and we'd trot.)

As I said recently, I'm a very goal-oriented rider. You want your miles. Today I decided I would dismiss that idea. I would not touch her with my legs the entire ride. I would let her even mosey, if she wanted to.







I knew the loop, she knew it, but......how slow could we do it? Could I pretend, effectively, that she was a Quarter Horse and not a ArabX?

It worked.

She meandered down the trail, feeling nothing from me except an exagerrated following motion in my body. Trying to ride on my "pockets" as Eryn used to say.

Then she said, "NO.

Too scary. Too stressy. I cannot."

It was a curve in the trail, as usual, that halted her. She is afraid of what might come around the corner. I get that. I know that sometimes a mountain biker cannot avoid driving his front tire directly between the front legs of my horse. It's happened to me.

 She froze in fear/reluctance/laziness/petulance (Get the rider OFF NOW).

I let my eyes glaze over. I breathed deeply. I thought about my day.

She tried to turn around, obviously the better alternative to the corner ahead, even though it wasn't toward home.

I prohibited this turn, and sat deeply.

I breathed for a while and then gave her a treat. "If you'd like to just stand still, well, it's not so bad for me, and it's something you normally hate to do.

Let's just do it some more. You wanna just stand here? Good."

It was that moment when she clicked her brainy bits together and they said, "It's no good.

It doesn't get the rider to get off you.

It doesn't let you go home the way that seemed most reasonable. It doesn't appease our need to fight."

Our nature is to fight back but we have to transcend that instinct.

Do nothing.

Then she starts like in low- gear. It was so funny. Her legs moved like in pudding. She didn't want to go forward but her thinking mind was saying, "It's the best choice."

She moved through the pudding in slow motion, until she was actually walking again. Around the scary turn.

It was awesome. It happened 4 times, which to me, made that the most successful ride in a long time.

I was bummed no one was out there to see us, those people who always say, "Get on the horse."

Afterwards she wanted to be rubbed all over, what she never does. I did my best but angled her near the donkey, who really should be reciprocating her massage needs.