Where the Wild Mares Are

I haven't ridden in almost a month, thanks to a combination of spending 80% of my weeks in the law school from 9-9, the the other 20% either desperately trying to catch up on work or desperately trying to convince my renegade horse to stop being an asshole and just come close enough for me to catch.  Daytime turnout sucks.

"Stupid human... I am feral now."

Finally, after a solid month of not being able to catch her, she actually let me grab her on Saturday.  Of course, she immediately started acting like she hadn't been handled in years and didn't understand simple things such as: going through gates without trying to bolt and run over the tiny human, respecting the human's space while walking, not spooking at trees and other innocuous objects, and standing to be groomed.  I had, before even going up to the barn, decided that I would just lightly lunge and do groundwork.  I mean, it's been a month, I would have felt bad just getting on and expecting her to work.  I figured a groundwork refresher would be in order.  Well, the minute we got into the ring and I asked her to walk off on the lunge, she took off like a rocket.  A rocket that had apparently forgotten how to not yank my arms out on the lunge line and be polite.  After she careened around for awhile, I got fed up, made her stop, unhooked her, and decided to free-lunge.  Go figure, the minute I decided to free lunge, she decided she could stay on a perfect circle around me.  She zoomed around for awhile longer, but eventually settled and trotted around like a semi-adult individual.  She even did some halfway decent in-hand work.  It was not great by any means -- she was distracted and still pretending that she had forgotten 90% of the things she's learned -- but by the end she was at least being polite and responding correctly to the questions I was asking.

Dare I think that I might actually get to ride this weekend!?