Beautiful Elegant Hard-Working Girl!
Here are a photo and video of Violet working with Kelsey this past summer. You can see that my girl brought her best heart to her task. So, I'm writing this entry on Sunday, September 9th and Violet came back to work after a week's vacation to a new teacher, Jill. So, today, after two riding lessons with Jill, I come to the barn on a beautiful sunlit cool morning. I tack Violet and we walk around the farm. At first, she's tentative and taking baby steps and moving cautiously, but then when she feels that I have confidence and that I'm happy and certain, she turns into a happy thoroughbred and walks boldly and relaxed and with interest. We walk around the pond and farm several times and practice leg yields and circles and just enjoy ourselves.
And then we go into the indoor arena. I let her have her face the entire time. We do a big bold stretching racing trot, big booming trot, big booming canter. We do shallow serpentines, circles, diagonals, leg yields. We do all of this, all of this, with a long low reaching stretch. And she's just stunning. She doesn't worry about the gates. She doesn't fight. She doesn't toss her head or snatch at the left rein. We're just relaxed and moving forward with joy. It was awesome. When she halted and I got off, we were both surprised. I could tell by her expression that she was pleased and joyful about how much fun we'd had and how hard we worked at our awesomeness. I could tell she was proud at how well she had done. I very much love my red mare. I gave her treats and words of love.f
And then I played with sweet Renny for a bit. It was one of the nicest Sundays I've ever had.