Who is this focused mare?

Rose is in heat, which normally does not warrant a blog post, but something a little odd happened last night.

I've become very attuned to and used to her expressions of discomfort when she is in heat. It usually starts with dancing in the cross ties, being pushy, not standing still, tenderness on her sides being brushed, and being distracted by anything and everything possible. Not to mention randomly peeing everywhere. "Oh boy" I thought, as I put her in the cross ties and she began dancing about. Luckily the gelding Chico that is stalled next to the cross ties seems to have no interest in Miss Thing at all, which is a huge relief to me. He got a carrot for being such an awesome chill gelding superstar. Anyway, we worked through her touchiness, and surprisingly she was fine about being saddled and girthed. "Odd" I told the stable dog Taboo who was now focused intently on the fact that I have carrots,  "That's not her 'in-heat' MO". With a shrug and sigh into the arena we go for a hack without much expectation. I decided to just work on my seat, let her be in heat, and see where we end up. Well, she stood perfectly still at the mounting block. "Humph" I thought. I swung a leg over and off we went.

Rose was instantly focused on the task at had and gave me 110%. About half way through it occurred to me that she wasn't even pretending to spook at anything. "Humph" I thought again. I worked on my seat a lot, and boy am I sore today. It's hard work transitioning from hunt-seat to dressage. The whole relaxed lower leg and sitting on one's arse is defiantly a new one for me, but I am making great progress. Aside from that I was also able to work on all of our training tasks at hand as well. We had nice straight balanced walk, trot, AND canter gates, and our best downward transitions to date. And...drum-roll...half-halts at the canter! After all was said and done, I drove home through the torrential downpour the happiest that I have in a long time. She was such a good girl.

Happy trails.