Lovely Little Lady

After having a long workout with Poco I enjoyed myself with a little ride on Ava. Although we could only ride in the round pen (cows and a cutting lesson going on..) she still did amazing. We worked on a little bit of collection, rollbacks, follow your nose, and then at the end I desensitized her to a really noisy feed sack. I would hang it on the saddle, throw it on her, wave it around, and at the end she was really good. At the end of every session I will always do some desensitizing, there needs to be a balance between sensitizing and desensitizing; too much sensitizing and they will end up being jumpy, too much desensitizing and they will become dull. It works really well for Ava and Poco.

I have also been wanting to try working with Ava on western pleasure. Although I would love for her to be a working rodeo horse I think I need to look at the big picture. What I really want is for my future children to be able to ride her and take her on trail rides and possibly if they want to they could even show her. If Ava has a life of rodeo I don't think she would suit young children (just my opinion, every horse is different); and I think western pleasure, showmanship, things like that could keep on the right track. So, yeah, for now I want my end result for Ava to be a kid safe horse with a little competitive attitude, haha!

A couple years back my mom got me
this book and it is supposed to be very
good so I will definitely be reading this

Right before our little workout

She always looks wide eyed, or, distracted?