first time outside

On Sunday, I rode in the outdoor arena for the first time. I handwalked her once around each way just as a precaution--there is a big tree in the middle of one end and I wasn't sure if she'd react to it. She was a star and so I hopped up. Thing to work on: standing for the mounting block. She likes to swing her butt away from it or back up once she knows you're committed to stepping up onto the block. I had her go in a bunch of little circles, and then she stood for the block on the second try. She wanted to move right out into a trot, but that was obviously not allowed. We did more "if you try to start trotting, you will go in a small circle" and after almost ten minutes we had made it calmly around each way. I love her natural willingness to go forward and don't want to discourage it too much, but I really do want her to get a good walk warmup before we move on to trotting. 


Trotting felt quite rushy as well, so we did lots more circles and changes of direction. She was also very chatty with the horses in our barn and the horses in the neighboring pasture that belong to another barn, but not as bad as on Friday. She was better about keeping moving while calling rather than telescoping her neck up and sticking her head in my lap, so I just made sure she was moving and ignored the yelling. We took a few walk breaks interspersed with our trotting, and once we were able to go from walking up to a nice calm trotting without having to take a lap or two to slow down, we picked up the canter. We went left first, as that's her better direction. She was pretty chilled by then, and we had pretty much no problems. I kept us on a midsized circle just in case we were overtaken by the omg-cantering-outside-happies, but we were very drama-free both directions and so we called it a day. We walked around on a loose rein for 10-15 minutes, then I gave her a shower and put her back in her paddock (whereupon she immediately rolled, of course).
Coming over to say hello


She thinks this whole crosstie business is a waste of time

Having a good roll to get the clean off