Equine Masterpiece: Progressing with Beauty

Now that's progressive.

Lol, jk. But things are coming along really well with Beauty! Here's a quick timeline of what she's been doing and how she's improving. :)

We got the mare in mid-April and she was thin, hairy, and probably wormy:

We knew she'd need a tune-up done on her so we sent her out to a trainer's for 2 weeks, which ended up being 1.5 months. Turned out Beauty didn't hardly know how to do anything under saddle. But the trainer taught her well; the two times I visited to ride went really well!

She returned from the trainer's early last month and got a nasty cut on her face during the trailer ride:

It was worse than that ^ looks, believe me. It took an awesome vet, stitches, and an excess of $200 in vet charges to fix it. That was done and then we turned Beauty out to pasture for a few days by herself. We put a fly mask on in hopes that she wouldn't dirty her face.

After about 5 days I tried riding her bareback and bridleless. It was okay in that she didn't try anything stupid, but it didn't work so well. ;)

Finally the injury healed enough to use the bridle, yay! Using that and either our Western saddle or the bareback pad I've been riding her almost everyday for the past 22 days.

She and I had a few things to work through. The first couple days she'd get nervous when I rode her and just want to trot. Got her past that and things have been going pretty well! Her walk is good, and so is her stop (on a dime) and back. She also knows how to sidepass and half-pass, though she only does it when she's confused.

With that said, I started neck reining instead of direct reining a few days ago. She's learning it incredibly fast. Just yesterday I rarely had to use any direct reining with her at the walk. At the trot? We still need to work on that.

Here are a few more pictures of Beauty. She looks so much better now that she's getting grain and lots of hay. :)