Last Work Day Before CMD

Sunday was our last work day. Jessica wanted me to go out and ride Copper before he comes home, so I headed out there with Mom and Bill in tow. Actually, the trailer was in tow and Mom and Bill met me there. I dropped off the trailer for Jessica to work with Copper on, because it's such a small trailer compared to Mom and Bill's. It took an hour to get him into their big trailer to take him to Jessica's, so we knew he'd take some work to get into our little two-horse, straight-load trailer.

Jessica had me do his whole routine - round pen work, ground work, and riding. He worked like a perfect gentleman and his power steering is much better than Skeeter's. I know this after riding them back-to-back. He really was amazing. I spooked him once by slapping the saddle strings against my leg, but he recovered quickly.

When we were done, we headed back home to work with Miss Skeeter. She and I had a really bad work day on Friday and I wasn't comfortable working her by myself. When I say bad work day, I mean bad - she got all hard-eyed and kicked out at me a couple of times while working on the circle. I thought maybe just she and I were feeding our frustrations off of each other, so I had Jay work her and she did the same thing. One moment, perfect, soft-eyed and willing; the next, hard-eyed and kicking.

I had been bragging about how she'd gone through estrus without me even noticing a change in attitude and it bit me in the butt. I think she just wasn't feeling well post-estrus and was letting us both know. No matter the reason, I felt it prudent to wait until I had back-up just in case she was able to connect if she had more "episodes".

Of course, once I had more ground support, she was excellent. Truly amazing, which makes me believe even more that she was suffering from some post-estrus nastiness.

She was so good that I rode her (in her beautiful new saddle) around for about ten minutes.

And then Mom rode her around for about ten minutes ...

The stirrups were a bit short, but Mom made do

Finally, Bill crawled up on her. By that time, she was pretty close to being done, so he only rode for about five minutes ...

If that look doesn't say "I'm done", I don't know what does.

I'm pretty proud of her for being so good. Three different riders on a horse with less than fifty rides - only about five rides at home - without a fit is wonderful. I could not be more pleased with her.

Unfortunately, there hasn't been any more time to work with her this week, so the next time I'll be up on her will be at Mustang Days on Friday. This week has been filled with brand inspections and vet visits for their health papers. Jessica has been a God-send; she handled the brand inspector and the vet for Copper so I didn't have to take even more time off of work. Additionally, she has worked Copper with the trailer so when we go pick him up at 5:30 a.m. on Friday we shouldn't have a battle.

My hope is that Skeeter loads up nicely, because I haven't worked with her on it at all. She's been trailered places, but not in our trailer, though she has loaded up into it previously. Positive vibes for an easy loading at 4:30 a.m. would be appreciated.