Our First Ride

So we went out yesterday to just check on the ponies and somehow, from that, this ended up happening.  I'm still not entirely sure how.

The bottom of Artemis' pasture is pretty flooded out, but it's not really that much worse than usual.  It's not fast-moving or dangerously deep, and she still has over half the field of high ground to get away from it.  The worst issue is the bugs.  They're absolutely insane out there and made for a very eager Artemis to come inside. 

Since she was up at the barn, I saddled her up and lunged her.  We had an audience today, (K and our barn owners) so instead of my mom helping me out, K helped me out.  She held Artemis while I leaned over her back and then lead her around.  Like usual, Artemis was fine with it.  So we decided to see how she'd be with K leaning over her back.  Artemis didn't care.

Since she was being so good, we decided to push a little further.  We wanted to see how she'd be with me actually sitting on her.  I think the video speaks for itself.

When I first put my leg over her, she tensed up for a second and then relaxed almost immediately.  The two moments where she does start to get tense are when she begins sidestepping.  But as you can see, she at no point had any inclination to freak.  In fact, she was a lot more calm than I was.  I was freaking out inside the whole time.  She didn't share my trepidation.  At the beginning of the video, when she turns her head away from the camera, she's actually trying to nibble on my foot.

I know I'm only on her for like thirty seconds but it felt like forever to me.  We ended the day once I got off of her.  She did so awesome, it would have been stupid to expect more out of her.

There's still a lot of work to do, but I've put a plan of sorts into place.  I think I'm going to switch Socks and Artemis out for a while, so Artemis comes up into the pens and Socks gets some down time in the pasture.  This way I'll be able to work with Artemis more regularly for a while.  This won't happen until the round pen is dried up because I intend have my first real ride (where no one leads her and I'm controlling her) in the safely enclosed round pen.

I'm so proud of her, I couldn't stop smiling all of last night because I couldn't stop thinking of how awesome she was.

As an ending note, the flooding, for the moment, seems stable.  As far as I've heard it hasn't gotten worse and waters have even begun to recede a bit.  Hopefully that keeps up.