Patients is a virtue

Now that I am getting regular quality sleep, I've been able to take an objective step back and screw my head on straight. Upon reflection, I now see that one of the things that was causing me frustration with Rose back in December was actually the bi-product of exhaustion. When I'm a completely sleep deprived zombie I apparently become stingy with my normally large quantity of patients. Any that I had laying around went entirely to JR. At the same time though I expected a five year old warmblood to just "be good" and do her job, after having more or less an 18-month break from ground work training and only maintenance hacking. Obviously that was an unfair expectation, but I was too tired at the time to see that clearly.

However, now I'm back. I can once again think and I see the error in my ways. My patients have returned and I'm  able to extend them not only to JR, but Rose, Hubs and any number of other creatures in my day to day life. This is good, because my horse training motto has always been slow and steady wins the race. I've never had much success with just trying to take a short cut and force an issue with a horse. Sometimes it is necessary, but the bulk of the time I've found it only makes things harder.

So we are back to taking things slow and steady and I've been really happy with the progress that Rose is making under saddle, over fences, and on the ground. More on that to come...

Happy trails and swooshing tails! 
•DS•