The Cinch and Pepper Adventures

To get a good summary of things, please go here tp read up on things.

I wanted to share because I'm SO excited with how things are coming along in just a week before Pepper and I. We had our first lesson last Thursday. With work and my trainer's schedule, we didn't do our next lesson until this Wednesday. Things didn't go as well that day. My knee was killing me horribly, and asking a horse to disengage their hindquarters with a knee that doesn't want to get where it needs to... just royally aggravated myself and the horse. But it also turns out Pepper was just being a bit of a butt that day as my trainer hopped on and she was pulling the same stuff. We moved onto pivots and that went better, but overall wasn't a great day of riding.

Yesterday, we went on our first ever trail ride together, her 4th or 5th since we've had her. She was phenomenal. Got a bit spooked at a few things, but settled down. Even tolerated these idiotic dogs that try to chase the horses (but have an electric fence). We also crossed a creek twice, and she fortunately didn't try to lay down this time (she tried to on the trainer, lol!). My knee and ankle were beginning to kill me really bad when we started the way home (I've got a bad knee/ankle, any and all saddles cause me this right now, just gotta get back into the swing of things) and instead of being a horse that wants to go go go on the way back home, Pepper seemed quite in tune with me and slowed down and was quite fine just putsing down the road.

Today we went out just because I knew I had to ride otherwise the soreness would never go away. Well, my friend and I had talked about trying her on the barrel pattern just to see how she'd do, so she agreed to try it out on her (she's a lot braver than I am! lol). So we saddled her on up and did a beautiful job on the lunge line and my friend hopped on. Of course the end of the arena scared her a bit like every arena seems to, lol, but she was great. Eventually trotted and loped beautifully, just got a little high strung.

And apparently she knows what barrels mean because she sure tried to book it the first time she took her around the last barrel. Lol!

Then I hopped on to cool her off and ugh. I am beginning to just love love love this pony. She's got enough sass to keep me on my toes, but is a horse I'm thinking I could put anyone on (not that I want to, that's my baby! lol).

Yea... just had to share because I'm so excited we're coming together. I've really been missing Fawkes, so these last few days have definitely helped me realize I did the right thing with trading her.