Three Weeks

Today marks three weeks since Navi came home. Usually there isn't anything exciting about three weeks, but for us it means that we are 99.5 % sure that we are in the clear from any disease she may have picked up at the sale yard. Yippy!  We still have one week left before we turn her out with the other horses, but at this point she seems to be one healthy filly :) The vet has seen her twice and says she looks great!

Because we have moved past the quarantine stage now she has been getting turned out in the outside round pen during the day for some fresh air. Although now she has decided she likes her stall, and she is refusing to leave it! She leads great coming back into the barn, but leaving the barn is very slow going. I haven't ever seen a horse that doesn't want to come out of the stall. My thought is she doesn't like being in the round pen all day by herself since there are other horses in the barn. I could be wrong, but its the only rational I can come up with besides that she eats in her stall and would rather wait all day to eat then go outside. I would put more thought into this issue if she was going to stay stalled, but soon enough it won't be an issue. We will put lots of training into leaving the pen though, lol, I am sure of that!

We did get some good training time in on Friday. We worked on targeting and touch. Really all I want from her right now is to learn how to learn. We spent some time in the round pen teaching touch on command. I am using my hand as the target and when we work on it we are always working on not being pushy for treats. Of course she is a baby and is still trying to figure out how to get the treats, so we have some learning to do on not mouthing me. Over all she is being pretty good, I can see the wheels turning in her head when trying to figure out what I want her to do. After our target training session we worked on moving off of pressure...not her favorite thing! She is LAZY! We did some trotting around the pen, she is hard to motivate to get moving faster than a walk. I am thinking we will have to come up with some creative ways to make moving faster rewarding for her.

After training with Navi, my partner and I got Pixie and Willow and went for a short ride. We try to take advantage of any nice weather we can to ride outside. The girls were great as always! I love my mares! 

Yesterday was extremely busy at work, so I ended up getting out an hour late. Nothing unusual about that around the holidays. I love being busy at work, however it does cut into my training time during the winter since its dark by 5 and I am tired. I did go straight out to the barn after work though and said hi to Pixie, Willow, and Jess. They were all good, but disappointed I didn't bring them their treats. I was still able to sneak in a little bit of time with Navi before heading home. We brushed, picked hooves, and detangled her tail. The only training we did was work on head lowering on command. She did well. I think that will be an easy command for her as she is pretty relaxed all the time, unlike Pixie who still struggles with it.  All in all Navi is coming along nicely. I swear her back end has had a growth spurt the last two weeks. Looking at her yesterday I think her butt is as high as her head, lol. Okay maybe its not that bad, but she is currently downhill.