Puddles!

It has been especially rainy where I live lately, which made me pretty upset, because I didn't think I would be able to ride, due the fact that my field has been replaced with a lake. But I was wrong; I went outside and saw Lilly edging around a puddle, and I thought to myself "Oh god my horse really hates puddles" Which is true, Lilly despises them. So I then realized, the rain had given me an opportunity.

I saddled up and we set off for our puddle training course. I started trying to make her walk through a small one, it was probably only a foot wide. She went around it at first, but after trying a few times, she eventually went through it. We went through that one a few times, and then we tried some bigger ones. The same thing happened, but we did end up getting them.

After getting her pretty used the the puddles, I began to wonder what to do next. Then I saw something fun. In my pasture there is a small ditch [I should take a picture to show you guys]. It really isn't even a ditch, more like an indentation in the ground - circular- that's about a foot deep and a foot and a half wide. It had filled up with water. I walked Lilly over to it and let her sniff it, she's always hated this ditch even when it doesn't have water in it. After walking around it a few times I started trying to get her to go through it. I must say, this was quite the challenge, though I might make it sound pretty fun on my blog, Lilly is the farthest thing from an easy horse. After about 2 minutes of her refusing to walk through it, I took a brake from it. I figured I could come back to it later.

Setting up a line of poles in the middle of my field going through a puddle, I made Lilly trot them. She didn't like it at all, and it was a little wobbly, but she did it, and that's all I was asking for.

Coming back to our ditch puddle, we tried walking through it again. I didn't get mad at Lilly when she went around it yet again, because I knew this wasn't Lilly being stubborn, she really was scared of this. I just tried and tried over and over again, calmly, but firmly,and we did get through it. It wasn't too graceful at all, it wasn't even right through the middle, but she touched the water, and that is good for Lilly.

-Sophia