Good Saturday afternoon...

Good Saturday afternoon, all!  Today was another nice day with warmer temps.  I am enjoying this January thaw, especially since we did not have one last year.  Today, Sarah and I worked on a lope-over pole.  At first she wanted to break gate over the pole.  Again, adding a little more leg corrected this, but then, she almost jumped it a few times.  A few repetitions slowed her down, and then she started to think how best to place her feet.  We worked this in both directions.  In the end, she was quite good.
Then, I set up a gate obstacle with a pole placed lengthwise beneath the rope.  As before, Sarah was required to negotiate this gate while also placing her feet just so to avoid ticking the pole.  The first time that I asked her to do this, she ticked the pole with one hoof.  The second and third time through, no ticks.  We took the gate in both directions.  Sarah is still tempted to bite the rope.  At one point she actually did grab the rope in her teeth, and started to back away from the obstacle at a 45 degree angle.  She did this against my commands to move forward until the post holding the rope actually tipped over.  At this point most horses would spook and fly backwards.  Not Sarah.  She simply dropped the rope...who says that horses don't have a sense of humor?  Then it was discovered that the reason that she did this was because I had placed one pole in a bad position, one that was at 90 degrees from one gate post.  This allowed her no room to back up when negotiating the gate lest she be required to back over a pole.  Backing over a pole is usually a punishment for not paying attention.  She had done everything correctly before this, so of course, backing over this pole was offensive to her!  Realizing this required me to dismount, and move this pole so that there was a horse-width between it and the gate post.  This gave her room to negotiate the gate.  On the do-over, she performed flawlessly.  She is smart.  Fortunately, she is also quite affectionate and steady as well.  How lucky we are!
New bedding for Sarah today; also a new bag of cubes.  This mare is quite pampered.  And yes, we all love her so!