This past holiday break was a time to put 5 solid days in a row into working with ponies. The weather was fantastic, over 30 every single day and a couple of days it was around 50. Considering we have already been in the single digits, it felt like 70. It did create that age old problem though - mud. Oh well, not complaining considering we could work ponies in sweatshirts and jeans instead of enough layers to resemble the Michelin man.
Sundae got to come in every day and stand at the hitching post. She had one teeny tiny short lunging lesson the first day which was mostly to remind her that I am the alpha mare and can move her around AND that pressure on the halter means come forward right now. The first day I led her up to the arena she came in with a total attitude. She would strike at the ground and stomp on it, run backwards instead of forward and just in general acted like a little snit. By the end of that first lunging/tying lesson, she was walking calmly and quietly next to me. She also learned to trot next to me in hand when asked. Smart girl.
Tying was a bit of a struggle when she would grow impatient. Sundae has been pretty used to being a queen bee around the farm. She has always been the overconfident one. Being asked to stand tied and wait patiently seemed beneath her in her little mind. The second day I gave her Smoothie as a baby sitter. Who would have thought that sentence would come out of my "mouth" a month ago? Smoothie as a babysitter. When Sundae went to throw herself down on the ground in a fit, Smoothie actually moved closer to her and bumped her as if to say, "knock it off, kid - you're not going anywhere." Each day Sundae got a little better and each day I was more proud of how far Smoothie has come.
Smoothie spent an amazing 5 days in a row of being a little rockstar. She has really come out of her scared shell and is blossoming into the best girl ever. A month ago when she got scared she would run as far as she could to get away and it would take several minutes for her to calm down and start thinking and stop reacting. Now she tries so hard to stay with me and make the right choices. She may start breathing loudly or more heavily. She may twitch when something scares her but she doesn't teleport 20 feet away. I can read when she is starting to lose her cool, but more and more often she is able to bring it back all on her own, even when I continue to push her out of her comfort zone.
I never would have imagined that I would put her first ride on. There is an old saying that courage is being scare to death, but saddling up anyway. That was me. I had seen all of her freakout moments and I was scared to death that her first ride would have her reverting back to the running away with no thought (and me flapping around helplessly on her back before flying off into oblivion). But she had been SUCH a good girl for 4 days of ground driving and ground work straight that it didn't take much encouragement from Sophie before I decided I owed it to Smoothie to be the first one on her back.
She was beyond great. I'm sure she was reading my nervousness, but handled it like a champ. She never did anything silly and I couldn't wipe the smile off my face for hours after. I'm pretty sure every muscle in my body was tense the entire time and I can still feel the soreness in my upper back today, but it was totally worth it. The next day, Libby, who is much more confident than I am, rode her on the line and then said "unclip me" and they were off. If anything Smoothie was lazy and was chill the entire time. While other ponies are scared of the gates, the dark corners, the hay bales and the changes in the sand, Smoothie just walked and trotted around like she didn't have a care in the world.
Libby and I were talking yesterday about how far Smoothie has come and how long it took us to get here. While it seems like just yesterday we brought her home, it really has been almost 60 days. Normally I would expect to be swinging a leg over a pony in training by 30 days at the latest. For it to take this long seems like a bit of a failure on our part. However, I'm not ashamed or feeling like I failed Smoothie in the least. There were a couple of 3-4 day gaps where I didn't have time to work with her, but I was fairly consistent in my time with her. She just needed that extra time to trust. Rome wasn't built in a day and Smoothie's trust wasn't built in 30. I look back at my training log from even a month ago and we had a terrible day in her training. I never would have believed that 30 days later we would be riding her. Riding her AND not worried about it or hanging on for dear life.
I'm sure there are programs where someone could have ridden Smoothie a month ago. I'm sure she would have come around eventually and stopped running away from people. She's a super smart pony - she would have figured out that running from someone on her back wasn't going to work. Someone could have made her push through it all and forced her into submission much faster than I was able to convince her that humans weren't going to hurt her. Someone could have rode out whatever bucks or jumps that being scared out of her mind. But someone also could have blown her up, made her hate people and made her hate being ridden. I hope by taking things at her pace, we have set her up for a lifetime of success. I hope that we have given her the foundation to become a child's pony, whether that be a trail pony, a show pony, jumping or a game pony, who knows? Success is measured in a lot of different ways. Happy and healthy pony is all we can dream of for our ponies and I feel like Smoothie is well on her way.
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