She's doing great!

Dakota is a great horse! Let me just say that once and for all. Today was a good day. She stood quietly for grooming and let me pick up all her feet, including her right hind leg which for some reason she really does NOT want to lift! We ran together in the big arena and she followed me around like a puppy. I'm trying to get her to move away from me and work in the round pen, but I'll have to read more about how to do that. She is stuck to me like glue. She learned some new things, like the command 'back' along with different hand signals. We are starting to learn the 'yo-yo' game (Google Parelli games). She doesn't get it yet, but I can see her trying to figure it out. She seems to really like to learn and learns fast! She remembers almost everything I teach her the first time. Not used to that! I used to work with horses that were much more 'hot' and tense and harder to teach. I've decided Dakota is a 'left-brained introvert' in Parelli horsenality language. She could be a LB extrovert, but I don't think that is her tendency. She is confident and strong-willed, but not overly so. She learns very quickly but I need to balance her by teaching her to be more sensitive and move forward. I think this will be her 'learning curve,' though getting her as a youngster makes all the difference! Whatever tendencies she has can be balanced so much more easily in a young horse than an older horse.

Here is something I wrote on facebook yesterday:

My horse got her feet trimmed today. Saw the vet on Thursday. She is so sweet and lovely...when she's not being a bratty teenage yearling! Her face was too big for the fly mask my friend Trish gave me. She's going to be a big girl!!! I stood with her for an hour in her run-in and she snuggled against my arm and whinnied when I left...I love her...