The Haul-in

Today it rained. However, all was not lost! A good friend of mine had arranged with her barn owner for me to haul-in Rose. This was to be a day of firsts. Rose's first trip in the new trailer, A's first time hauling live cargo, Rose's first time at a different barn and in an indoor arena. Although we had success loading her a couple weekends ago, I still planed on the worst case scenario and allowed an hour for loading. With A's help at the rear, twitch handle in hand, I took up her head. One, two, three taps and she picked up her front foot and walked on. 30-seconds. Dang, that left 59.5 more minutes to fill. After a few more seconds of delightful head scratching we decided to just use the opportunity to practice loading more. So we backed slowly off the trailer, gave her lots of praise and repeated.

After the third load, we just decided to head down the road and show up a little early. Upon arriving at the barn, I didn't know what to expect, but again planned for the worst. She was pretty darn good about it. She was a little hot and very curious as to where we were, and I'm sure somewhere in her brain she delightfully realized that she was not at the vet! Once we walked her down the isle of boarder horses, she realized she was not alone and immediately calmed and settled right in. I had groomed her at home, as we only had a 10-minute drive, so we went straight into the arena to let her get acquainted with it. She was mildly curious about the space, but overall was very comfortable. I hadn't formed a firm plan of what to do at the barn, as the trip itself was the training lesson of the day, so I free lunged her a bit. It was so satisfying to watch her trot and canter around an arena without fear of her sliding in the mud. She too seemed to delight in the sure footing as she effortlessly floated around the arena. After her little warm up we set up a jump shoot with a tiny ex. At first she hadn't a clue as to what we wanted her to do, but she figured it out in the end and got a lot of praise for it. Afterward, she passed up on the opportunity to roll in a delicious arena* and then got to hang out in an empty stall for a half hour before walking straight onto the trailer* and returning home to her anxious pasture mate! An extremely satisfying day.

*I still have yet to ever see her roll...
**no twitch handle required!