First Outing

Also Miss Mary jumped over a big log - rather dramatically the first time and then nicely the second time. She walked on a bridge with Arrow and stood while I talked to neighbors and broke branches. I think she’ll sleep quite well tonight! I am super chuffed with this pony and excited to take her to the river trails near Chatfield and get her going under saddle so that a family member or masked friend can ride Arrow.

Mary Berry likes to rest her head on my leg or Arrow when we stop.

I’ve worked twice with Mary Berry on ponying in the paddocks and today we ponyed out in the open. I walked her for the way out on the ride while my youngest son rode Arrow. On the way home, I rode Arrow and ponyed Mary. MB was great both ways. She sometimes jumps the first time and then learns the second time and has got it the third time… that’s how she seems to work so far. She was great walking on the road with cars, great on the trail with many bikes and people walking dogs. We went down the canal to walk through lots of brush and leaves. It helps immensely that Arrow is such a solid gal and not easily flustered, so Mary Berry gains a lot of confidence from that.

Needing to work on Mary not following but rather having her head at my knee, so tomorrow we’ll do some arena and open field work on disengaging her hindquarters and getting her “unstuck”. Found a great Warwick Schiller training clip on this and looking forward to trying it. Also hoping to do all that with a little western saddle on Mary Berry. Today she wore a bareback pad. I also need to build on CHR’s work on trailering her - she had a great first session to get into my trailer and now we need to make it a solid skill.