day 15: out to the arena/ round penning

Today was a nice day so it was anonymously decided that Reece should get to go out and play some in our arena. To get to the arena we need to go threw part of the field so we had been avoiding it until we were certain that she would be confident in her new surroundings and not be to overwhelmed. When we first brought her out we lead Spud in front of her so that she would still be with a friend. She was a bit excited while we were leading her down. Doing things like trotting around me and lifting her head up to listen to the cats playing in the grass but there was no real trouble. Once we got her into the arena that had not been used in a while since we would normally go on trail rides she settled right into eating the grass that had grown in there and leisurely letting me lead her around. The moment I got the halter off of her to let her play some she went to trotting and galloping around with spud letting out all of that pent up energy she had collected from being in a 30’x25’ paddock. At one point she began studding a fence and acting like she would try to jump it, so I went over caught her and brought her into the round pen that we had set up at one end of the arena. I had been wanting to do some round pen work with her for a while and figured now was a good time.
We have already been doing some ‘lounging’ in her paddock on her 14 foot line but that was only walking, halting and reversing, now in a larger area we could do more. We started with the familiar. Walking, stopping and reversing on the 14 foot line. Then after probably 10 min. I took off her halter and started some free lounging. She got the hang of it quickly and soon began walking or jogging with either a lift of my arm or a few swings of the lead rope I was holding. On a few occasions, some being my fault because I either was not being aware of my body position or was not paying attention at all, she would stop and eat grass or get a sudden energy burst and go loping around jumping and kicking and playing around to release all of her energy. She did very well and is learning quickly.