Free Lunge Freedom!

Why is the mounting block the safe spot in the arena? No matter if a horse has a rider on their back or not that always seems to be the hoover point! Now that Echo has a clean bill of health, her blood work came back normal, I have no hesitations starting up her training again. 

As always, plans change, this time thankfully its just slight. The person I first planned on doing 30 days with her is being kind of flaky on working with the horses she has in training right now and I want consistency with Echo. Instead, a different person at the barn is going to be working with us. In long run it's a better fit and she's the one who was going to help us out after the initial 30 days anyways. Biggest difference, she is an eventer! 

Anyways, the other night I put Echo in the indoor to free lunge her. 1) I wanted her to get a chance to become familiar with the arena again. 2) I wanted L to see her move. 3) I wanted her to move around because of the muddy fields and her paddock is on the smaller side. We let her loose and she gave her normal show of trotting and cantering around. Of course she sought out refuge from the mounting block to only quickly learn the mounting block can't save her when she has 2 girls wanting to make her move pretty! I decided to put a few ground poles up just to throw her off and make her think while she got her arena freedom. This only led to us setting up a small rail for her to free jump over. L was super impressed with how bold she was at a jump. Even if it wasn't pretty, Echo was super proud of herself for going over and would stop and look at us as if saying 'did you see that!'

Already have our first goal of the year. May 4th is the Thoroughbred show at Kentucky Horse Park. They have lots of beginner classes in just about everything so it should be a good time. Even if she goes and does an in-hand class I'll be thrilled!