First Day Being Indpendent...

It was so nice!!

My mentor and her husband are going away for the week and when I asked her about me coming out and riding Dixie during their leave, she said to feel free to come out whenever. I have been having to let her know what time and what-not. This was seriously a release of freedom for me as weird as that sounds. I've never had that freedom to come out whenever I can and ride however I want to. I mean I have to an extent but I don't really feel like I do. Don't get me wrong, my mentor gives me an excessive amount of freedom with the horses and I truely appreciate that, always will. But, there is still that feeling hanging over me that I can't mess the horse up, I can't do this, I can't do that.

I got up this morning with the intent on going out to the stable early. I did not have a set time and I made it there around 12pm. I talked to the barn manager for a while, I haven't seen her in more than week, I needed to catch up on my gossip ;) I then went out and got Dixie.

After I had her tacked up and ready to go, I set up two ground poles. We trotted over those a few times and then I decided to set up cones to weave through. She did pretty good on that, better than I thought she would have. We also did figure 8s with cantering and trotting. I was amazed with this!! She did beautifully with her leads!! Especially since we've had problems with the left lead. My prediction is that she will be seamingly easy to teach flying lead changes to. Yay!! We then set up a small calvetti...she knocked it a few times but then started to really pick up her feet.

It was so sweet, the entire time I set up everything. I had to get off numerous times and she followed me around, it was so sweet. I could have just died, she's the first horse who has done this with me, other than join up, and I felt so loved.

I'm going out tomorrow as well and maybe even Wednesday. I'm off tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday from work so it makes it a lot easier to go out to the stable and not have to worry about still having energy for the rest of the day. My mom will be coming out on Thursday or Friday so I'm hoping she can take many photos and probably videos. I also would love to ride Dixie bareback sometime this week, I'll have to see what the BM thinks.