Lovely day

Ok, yes, I hid at home til 3 pm today. But I have been planning for weeks to hide at home! Today was Equine Dentist day, and it gives me the heebiejeebies. I can't even bring myself to go to the human dentist unless I have a toothache. Yall know that I am a hands-on owner, but there is just no way I could watch somebody filing my horse's teeth down!

I got there shortly after the dentist and his (her?) Horror Show of Tools left. Dixie passed with flying colors, actually. No wolf teeth (I didn't think she had any...) and no retained caps or anything. Yay!

I decided I'd take it easy on myself today. I wanted to go over "whips are not evil" on the ground with her, but I didn't have any other goals. Today was sunny and 50s, but tomorrow is going to be rainy, so we headed outside. The grass is green and growing wildly, and the sky was robin's egg blue with picture perfect fluffy clouds in it. We had fun.

We went in the paddock that contains the round pen first. I unsnapped the lead and let her go explore - I don't think she's ever been IN that paddock. She did her snorty floating trot for a couple laps, then came back over to me. I put the lead rope back on her and started poking and thumping her with the dressage whip.

You would think getting whacked all over with a dressage whip was part of our daily grooming ritual. She did not react at all. Well, I take that back - when I poked her between her back legs, she kicked at the whip like it was a fly tickling her. But that was it. No reaction at all. Welp, mission accomplished, I suppose.

I let her loose to run around again. The round pen paddock and the outdoor arena both have sand footing, but there's some grass along the fencelines. Dixie settled down and started grazing, so I went over to the gate to the outdoor. I opened it and looked over - she flagged her tail up and floated over to me. We went through the gate and she did a couple laps around the outdoor, then settled down to graze again.

After she'd trimmed all the grass down, I took her back in. It was really nice, to take a break from pushing myself to Ride Better and Educate The Mare and Don't Freak Out. :) We both still have a long way to go, to get to where we're safe and have fun all the time.. but maybe it doesn't have to happen in April '09.

Dixie's feet look lovely. Not as pretty as Gogo's but she's getting there!

Tomorrow I'm going to work on The Evil Whip Under Saddle. The plan right now is to just touch her all over, climb on, touch her slowly and gently and deliberately all over, then get off, let her decompress, and repeat til we're both laid back about it. Before that, I'll get video of the Floaty Arab Imitation. It's pretty cute, yall will like it!