Never Too Old...

...to be a brat. Mimi's 19th birthday is coming up on Saturday, and she's still finding ways to try my patience. This morning, she didn't want to work. She wanted breakfast. We currently have access to the vacant property next door...it's basically 4 acres of fenced dirt lot. Because riding in the actual arena would have meant shooing all 10 of the other horses back out to the pasture (always a fun trick), I decided to just ride next door. Pretty fun, because it's a ton of space, and pretty good footing...if you mind the gopher holes.

But Mimi decided that today, she just didn't feel like listening to my legs. I've been making a concerted effort to retrain myself to stay out of her mouth (I have a horrible habit of grabby hands and a distinct lack of release) and force myself to rely on leg and seat cues more. It's a tough thing to do when your pony is conspiring against your best efforts. She did a fabulous "I'm ignoring you" impression as I asked her to circle away from the pasture gate...she curved away, but still managed to keep moving towards the gate.

Wrong answer, pony.

She got thumped on the side with my whole leg for her efforts.

That actually woke her up, and it only took one more decent thump (coupled with some disciplinary "eh-eh" noises and a couple cuss words) to get her actually paying attention to me. Me, unconventional trainer? Yeah, maybe.

And then we proceeded to have a pretty good workout. I kept it shorter today...I feel really bad because I was a bit too overenthusiastic in my last trim job on her...I had let her toes get way too long, so proceeded to do something of a remedial Big Trim on her.

Sometimes I think I've learned nothing in the two years I've been trimming.

So she was pretty sore for a few days afterwards.

I put her boots on today to make sure she was comfortable enough while riding, and that worked great at the walk and trot...but she was still a bit ouchy to canter. Considering her canter is sub-optimal on her best days, we didn't pursue it today. No sense in asking for trouble and discomfort.

Some days I feel like such a bad horse mommy. This isn't the first time I've done this, been overly enthusiastic in my trimming to the point of making her a bit sore. I guess it's all part of the trimming learning curve, and I'm probably taking longer to get it because I just don't trim enough horses to get comfortably schooled in it.

But considering it's now officially summer here, spending the heat of the day bent in half wedged under a horse just doesn't sound like a whole ton of fun...