ups and downs

Ok, so I haven't posted in awhile. Life's been busy. I've got some photos from a few days ago, but I haven't gotten around to uploading them, so stay tuned for those.
Here's a quick recap of what we've been up to (I'm not sure where I left off, but I know it was after she got her teeth done, so I'll start with last Thursday):
5/20
My friend rachael came up to see Dee, and we had a lovely ride. The right lead canter magically improved. She was round and soft instead of inverted and resistant. All in all, she was pretty good. Rach got on her at the end and walked and trotted her around a little. Dee was well behaved for the most part, though she did try to take advantage of rach a little bit.
5/22
I got on her at dinner time, which automatically made her none-to-happy with me. She was tense and grouchy for 90% of the ride, but her left lead canter was brilliant. I thought 'great! we've got BOTH leads down, now.' Well, Dee thought 'Mom, I did well going that direction, now I'm done playing.' She was atrocious going right. I'd ask for canter and she'd slam into my right leg and swing her haunches into the center. I'd give her a kick and she'd drop behind my leg. Finally, I just went back to walk to have it out with her a little bit. After some hard kicks with the right leg and some convincing wacks with the whip, she finally straightened herself out and got down to business. The canter wasn't great - she was still fighting me - but it was forward and relatively straight, so I left it at that.
5/24
The. worst. ride. ever. She was even MORE tense and even MORE grouchy than she had been on Saturday, and she was not in the mood to play. Half the time, she would just stop (or break to walk) and refuse to do anything else. It didn't matter how much I kicked or wacked, she was just not going anywhere. We did manage some half-way decent canter work in both directions, but it was basically a disastrous ride. It certainly wasn't what I wanted the day before I took her to Nancy's.
5/25
Needless to say, I was a little worried that our time at Nancy's was going to be spent having another knock-down, drag-out fight about forwardness. Turns out, though, that I didn't have anything to worry about. As I was telling Nancy about the horror of the day before, Dee decided to have a nice pee RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RING. Oh, hello raging heat, glad you're back. Nancy just looked at me and went "well, you may have your reason for the issues yesterday". As I was getting on, nancy's barn hand was just heading out to mow around the indoor and her barn manager had just turned on the leaf blower to clean the aisles. Well, the mower sometimes got quite close to the indoor and kicked rocks up onto the walls, but just watching Dee go, no one would be able to tell that anything was happening. She couldn't be bothered with the mower or the blower, and she had her game face on. It was awesome to be riding in an enormous indoor with heavenly footing, because I was just able to let her really toodle around. Her trot was big, bold and steady. Both leads were forward, balanced and soft. The flat work was the best we've ever had, and I think Nancy was really impressed with Dee.
After our flatwork, it was on to some jumping!! Yup, that's right. Miss Dee Jumped!!! At first, nancy just laid a caveletti standard down and had us walk over it. I think we actually insulted Dee with this, she just sort of sauntered over the pole going, 'yeah yeah, whatever'. So, Nancy put it up a little and had us trot it. The first time, Dee thought about jumping it and actually landed in canter after making a small effort, but after that she was over it and just trotted over the little caveletti like it wasn't there. So, we set up another. Yup, still not bothered! We ALMOST cantered the second one once, but she asked if she could go back to trot about two strides away and I let her. After that she wasn't even landing in canter, so we didn't bother. After we did the little line, Nancy had us try a little blue box. It took us a few tries to get over that one, mostly because I wasn't convincing enough and Dee was basically just saying 'well, if you aren't sure, I don't think i'm going'. She wasn't bad, she wasn't being naughty, I just wasn't giving her a reason to go OVER the scary blue box. On the fourth attempt, we made it over. It just got better from there, and she was getting more and more confident as we went. By the time we came to it the final time, she was actually fighting with me a little bit because she wanted to canter it. Due to the fact that our steering isn't quite up to par, though, I made her trot. Nancy was very pleased and told me that over the box, Dee was VERY cute with her front end. Yay! Poor mare was totally cooked by the end, but you could tell she was proud of herself. She got lots of pats and a nice shower. I felt bad, because on the hottest day so far this year, she had to work harder than she's ever worked before, but she was a superstar, and as it turned out, the next day was EVEN HOTTER.
5/26
Yesterday was out of this world hot. The thermometer was reading around 100, and even the barn (which felt cool and heavenly) was right around 85 degrees. Yikes! I did about 25 minutes of work before I quit for the day. It was just too hot. After 25 minutes, Dee was covered in sweat and so was I, but she had been REALLY good. She was forward and lovely and had a beautiful left lead canter transition (those are usually ugly).

Gosh, I love that mare.
Like I said, I've got some pictures from when Rachael came to visit, so I'll post those soon. Now. Off to ride!