A Willing Partner

Keeping away any competition for attention

Nice to see Mary Berry more relaxed every day

Relaxation is contagious

Don’t have any photos of our work from the past two days but Mary Berry really is a pleasure to work with. She tries to understand and cooperate. When she gets it, she adds a little enthusiasm! Wish I had a video of her jumping into the trailer once she understood I wanted all four feet in there. I think she would jump the moon if you asked. I’ll try to get a video of her loading in a relaxed manner tomorrow, today she was just pretty excited she could go in and I am so pleased with her.

Yesterday we went for our longest adventure yet - about five miles on the Highline Canal trail being ponyed. She crossed a bridge, several creeks and met an older man in a wheelchair and stood quietly while I talked (at a distance) from people. She saw some other horses and crossed a busy street along with having her first canter. She recovered from a slipping in the mud and scaring herself and went up and down hills. I am grateful again to Arrow for being so steady. We also met mini horses who were quite cute and interesting and then both mares held steady when a coyote came trotting across the trail (I told Arrow he was just a dog but she knew better yet stayed perfectly steady, thank you Arrow).

Mary is also being very social and is quite friendly in the pasture. For the first week and a half she was stand-offish and I had to drive her into the round pen to catch her with a bit of “hooking on” style maneuvering. Now I can catch her where she is or work with her in the larger paddock area and catch her just fine. She gets a lot of hugs. Mary likes to drive the donkey away so that she can have all the attention, but he’s also getting braver by the day… so there is some vying for attention and Arrow get’s jealous too.

Mary helped me with fence fixing today and had her nose inches from my hammer (on the other side of the fence) while I pounded in fence staples. She’s brave, thoughtful and cute to boot! Excited to see where this little girl can go in life. I am imagining a kid who wants to do it all - jumping, western, trail, dressage and general fun.

“Where is my blog people?” Hi August!