Beautiful Violet Working on Leg Yields
Here are an August 5th photo and video of my beautiful Violet, working hard and dutifully in her lessons with Kelsey. She's truly a charming intelligent mare. I'm writing this entry on Sunday, September 16th, after a gorgeous beautiful cool sunlit morning riding her. I got to the stable and she was obliging and reaching and soft for her Pessoa training. And then we had a ride in which we worked on lots of responsiveness to legs, circling, shallow looping, leg yielding. And then we cantered circles -- we cantered across ground poles in both directions and she gave me flying lead changes immediately. And then I asked on a simple circle and she gave me a lead change in her difficult direction, not even with a ground pole! She was trying so hard! She's amazing. Then I gave her a massage and treated her feet with oil and gave her lots of treats and put her in her pasture.
She's had her hooves grow so fast this summer, it's been amazing. Anyway, she had these shoes on and in 3 weeks 2 days, she started to grow over the shoe and break. So, we took off her shoes on Friday and by this morning, she was massively chipped off on her sides -- natural hoof-shaped chips, but I'll be very very glad when the farrier sees her. Another thing about her is that she's really taken to whipping me with her tail lately. I think her hindquarters might be bothering her. She is super stiff in her right hind leg.