Progress!

Well, after the battles we had to begin with about getting caught, the filly decided today that she would let me catch her.

She may change her mind about that tomorrow considering the indignities (to her mind) that I subjected her to today.

See, today we started on round pen training (it does take a bit of training to get them working good in the round pen) and we also got the bit for the first time.

She was very displeased with this turn of events, needless to say. Not rear and throw a fit displeased, but displeased nonetheless. I didn't have my phone with me so I missed what would have been great shots of her trying to shove the bit out the side of her mouth with her tongue, but here are a few I did get:


"If my mouth is open it will fall out. I'm sure it will. No, really. It'll fall out..."


"Well maybe if I put my head up it'll come out... maybe? Come on get this thing out of my mouth already!"


Notice the ears, above. She's gone from cranky in the first photo, to confused in the second, and in this one, she's annoyed.

This is about thirty minutes into the whole debacle. Right after this is when she decided that the bit wasn't going anywhere no matter how hard she tried and closed her mouth on it and stopped trying to spit it out. I was sitting on the fence pointing and laughing at her, and this annoyed look she gave me was just too good to pass up a picture of.

From here on out I'm not going to be able to take pictures while I'm working her, because I'll have my hands full actually working her. Tomorrow we'll go through the same stuff we did today (more briefly, hopefully) and start in desensitizing to have things on our back and around our front legs (because hobbles are handy). With any luck, we may get saddled tomorrow, but I'm not counting on it. She'll be saddled by the weekend and riding some time next week though, or at least that's my prediction. How long it takes to get riding depends entirely on how stubborn she wants to be about giving to the bit while tied around and ground driving, and that we won't know until we get there.