Mending a relationship

Not sure what it was, but Zarah has been avoiding me over the past week and I've been working to mend the relationship. Today, we made great strides. It was the first day in several days that she offered to walk to me. I'm not sure exactly what I did to make her think avoiding me was the best move. My guess is I pushed her too hard by taking her on the trailer, on the trail alone, or something like that. I was maybe doing too much with her. Anyway, I'm mending the bond and I'll pay close attention to be sure I don't do it again.

I put Kendall on Rain for a bit and she rode around the yard, crossing obstacles and just having an interesting time with Rain. In the meantime, I tended to Cowboys cut on his heel bulb. Zarah was in a stall finishing her grain. After Cowboy, I went in to see if she was interested in some time with me. She looked at me, I waited and about 10 seconds later she walked to me. Ahhhh... So nice.

I gave her a few cookies and haltered her. I led her into the barn and just brushed her for a while. She was relaxed and calm. She enjoys being brushed. This was the first time I'd interacted with her in many days. Her hind feet are starting to look very bull-nosed again. They were looking really nice for a while. I'm guessing the lack of movement is a problem. When I'm using her and riding her often, she lifts her hinds more than when she's in the pasture.

Anyway, I took her into the round pen and decided to try to teach her a trick. I chose the head-shaking trick. It was cute, she didn't have a clue. I've taught her to hug and we've tried to develop the bow. Seriously, I'm always working with her on specific tasks for the program and never just teaching her a silly trick. I could tell, she didn't really know how to feel about it.

She wasn't quite getting it and after some time, I smiled at her and we left the round pen. We'll see tomorrow if she thought that was interesting or not. I'll know by how she responds to me when she sees me tomorrow.