Benginning Balancing

Last night was interesting and perhaps a glimpse into what the future holds for myself and my two girls.
Unusually I was late leaving work and missed my normal bus home, so was later getting to the barn than usual which could be a nuisance now that I have two to manage but on this occasion worked out quite well as it was relatively quiet so less distractions & chatting out of me. So I was able to roll up my sleeves and get down to work.

I started by popping Kika in the walker while I cleaned her stable, then L helped me as we introduced Nancy to the concept of the walker. We tried the walker last night and I mean WE - I walked around with her on the leadrope. 3 turns and out we came, went from there to walk around another arena that she hadn't been in yet to calm down after the excitement and introduce her to yet another place of work. Kika had been on the walker as well as one other horse, so she wasn't alone.
I think plan is to try again this evening and see if she takes to it any better - maybe leave her off for a circuit or two on her lonesome, we'll see how she handles the idea this evening.

I rode Kika for roughly 20 minutes, long enough for walk/trot/canter, some circles and serpentines, then finished up as she was going so well and I didn't want to do too much after vaccines earlier in the week.
Put her away and fed her, leaving Nancy's stuff prepared outside her stable, I then brought N back out for a loose lunge in the arena nearest her stable. Mostly walk and trot work to get her listening to voice commands and responding - she's good. Very reluctant to canter but I can't blame her there, lots of spooky noises going on and she wasn't really sure what I wanted from her - so I think we'll stick to working on the lunge in the bigger arenas to balance the canter. I was working under the assumption she may have found cantering easier without the pressure/pull of the lunge and the ability to make her own sized circle - but she had difficulty maintaining it around a bend so we'll work on all that to help her understand. I think confusion was overriding last night as she wasn't entirely sure what I wanted from her.
Shall implement the mantra of baby steps while we suss each other out and figure out what we can and can't do.

I need to do plenty of work with her about having her feet picked out she's ok to do the front ones but not at all happy for the back ones to be done. I had words with her last night for one side and she was much better then to have the other side done - we shall see what happens this evening. It's nice to have little things to work on as hopefully through grooming we can build up a relationship and hopefully she might start to trust me.
It has been such a dramatic change for her this week I am trying to keep things simple yet I don't want her to think life here will be all easy hand walking to get used to arenas and walkers - will take things easy though until the penny drops and she settles a bit more. It is all still so new for her, I don't want to rush things and make mistakes as they could take a whole lot longer to undo!


Managed to get both girls done, stables cleaned and fed before the 10pm lights out at the barn - the fact I finished at 9.55pm is beside the point!