Questionable Baby Horse Things

 I continually horrify my mom when I tell her what Karma and I have done, and honestly with 99% of horses I would even dream doing these things. But I take little steps and have backup plans and bailout points if things don't go as planned.

1) Ride her for the first time without a ground person. This one was mostly due to a total lack of local friends. It's really hard to meet people when you move weeks before a global pandemic hits, and because I go into work regularly I try to reduce my risk elsewhere. I did have someone aware that I was getting on and asked her to keep an eye on us, but typically I would have had an actual ground person.

2) Test out bareback really early on. This was mostly due to laziness and the saddle fitting struggle (which still isn't done). Karma was totally fine, and if she hadn't of been I would have immediately bailed and ridden with a saddle.

The barn has a couple of dairy calves and they aren't quite as scary to Karma this year

3) Hack her out alone her first time out. This was again due to the total lack of local friends. I actually broke this into several days. To get to the field you have to walk past all the vehicles, trailers, equipment, and generally spooky things. Which the first day was noping out, so we spent a good 10-15 minutes just walking in circles progressively getting nearer to the scary things, without actually trying to go past them. The second time, she was still unsure, but wasn't flat out trying to say no, and then was perfectly fine once we got to the field.

4) Hack through the pig farm. I did hand walk her through it quite a bit. I am still bribing her with carrots, she still gets a bit nervous, and I still only try to go through it when it is the shortest distance to home to set her up for success. Honestly I don't blame her not liking it. It is smelly and noisy.

5) Hack out bareback. This was a recent development but really she has been out in the field enough that I wasn't expecting her to be any different than normal and she wasn't.

6) Carrying on after long breaks. I really really really appreciate this quality. I am so glad I don't have to think and consider how long it has been since I last rode her, because most of the time I don't have a clue.

Snow Rides

 I managed to sneak in a couple of snow rides before it decided to warm up, rain, and become and icy muddy mess. The first one Karma wasn't terribly pleased about because the snow was about 18" and I wouldn't let her trot everywhere. But it was very nice to get out and do something even if I did try to fall off at one point.

The other one was a nice little bareback hack. Once again someone has changed enough that I need a new headplate for the saddle. On the plus side I think I might have flaps that I can tolerate until I can swap them out for the ones on Stinker's saddle.