More Mounting with Calmness, Bareback and the Draw

Started with Tina tonight and was trying hard to beat the sun. I tacked her up, gave her a trim, and warmed her up with some groundwork. For the first day in 4 days, the wind wasn't insane. So nice to be outside w/o the crazy wind. Tina was doing great with groundwork. I'm doing a lot of the same things, so it's time to step it up and get more progressive on the ground. We pushed the ball - she pushes it for several strides now. We went over the teeter totter with calm confidence. We practiced the figure 8, falling leaf and jumping the barrels. In the round pen, we played with sideways/sidepassing, pushing the ball more and change of direction. Her head is low, she's not flinchy, things are good.

We practiced sidling over to the mounting block. She is starting to understand this one. I think put my foot in the stirrup and fidgeted around vigorously until the flinching stopped. It was much better tonight! She stopped flinching in 30 seconds and it was done. I reached over her back with my weight and rubbed the off-side, especially the flank area. This is an area where she get's very reactive and tonight she didn't flinch at all. So great. Then, I had Chrissy come support me by holding the lead while I mounted. We started on the left and surprisingly, Tina was unable to stand still for mounting. I drove the hind around quickly multiple times, then asked again. Again, she moved so I drove the hind around and tried again. It took 4-5 times of this before she realized it was easier to stand still for mounting. I mounted and waited for her to release any tension. It didn't take long at all, maybe 30 seconds. By now, the sun was setting and we had to quit. Darn, because we were making progress. Tomorrow...

With a few minutes of daylight left, I wanted to be sure Chrissy hopped on her horse bareback. We quickly sidled him over to the mounting block (he's figuring this out) and Chrissy hopped on. Kris, her fiancee took a turn too.

It's was pretty dark by now, but I grabbed Z and just worked on increasing her draw. I need strong draw from her for the spin, so I'm going to focus on that for a few sessions. She improved quickly. We pushed the ball a few times and did a few strides of the Spanish Walk. Then, it was time to call it - too dark to see. It was a productive 10 mins.