Mollie and I had another nice session yesterday. I changed up her tack a wee bit, and put her on the longe to make sure everything would stay in place. She was moving really well on the longe, that I didn’t feel the need to work her much more in that manner, so quickly mounted up and got to business riding.

The core of our workout was improving our canter – both transitions, picking up leads, and the quality of the gait. Mollie is such a great little horse- she really does try to learn as much as she can. Her leads improved by leaps and bounds (pun absolutely intended!).

That said, no horse is perfect, and I don’t want readers to think Mollie is without her faults. Her list of abilities is quite long, while her list of opportunities is short, and pretty common to young horses who just need more miles.

Things Mollie is Great At Doing:

• Quick to learn
• Steady horse- not very spooky
• Curious – will explore new things and ideas
• Great in hand- both during ground work and longeing- will w/t/c halt and reverse on cue.
• Great to bridle and saddle
• Stands for mounting, dismounting from ground or mounting block.
• Very rideable- easy walk, trot, canter, steering halt, back up.
• Very smooth gaits
• Beginning lateral bending work
• Fun in the arena, and out in the open
• Can ride alone or with other horses present
• Bathes
• Ties- cross or single tie
• Can be sprayed with spray bottle, fine with mane, tail, forelock grooming.
• Accepts syringes in mouth
• Hauls in straight or slant load
• Can be stalled, pastured, paddocked – individually or in group
• Safe to ride & handle- no bite, no buck, no kick

Opportunities to Improve:

• Continue to work on clipping abilities-  though MUCH better than she was!
• Continue with left-ear desensitizing
• Needs long warm-up (15-20 min) to loosen up and relax body. Will offer all she has after she gets that warm up!
• Will test her rider to see if she can be boss or not- will go her own way unless fairly directed otherwise
• Wants to join other horses when present- will try to float away towards them
• Needs to relax when handling hind hooves- she has never tried anything bad- she’s just nervous about it. I have been working with her to relax when hooves are being handled.

All of Mollie’s opportunities are really pretty mild – and she gets better with them each day. Overall she is a fantastic little horse, and I’ve really enjoyed my time with her. Whoever ends up with this little horse is going to be very lucky indeed!