It's about that time

Driving this morning

For an update, that is.  Ruby continues to do well - she picks things up very quickly and tries hard.  If I was more of a horse trainer, she'd be much farther along already.  Today was only her fourth or fifth time driving (due to weather and family illnesses) and she did fantastic.  When I asked for whoa, there was no pointing her nose to the sky - a vast improvement.  She's also been learning that taking the bit is a great thing...possibly due to the molasses smeared all over it.

After driving, we went for a neighborhood walk.  She was cool and collected, just taking in the sights even when a 4-wheeler approached.  She did spook as the 4-wheeler went out of her sight and the neighbors horses galloped up to the fence - definitely not her fault.  Her spooks are few and far between and consist of her turning to face whatever has startled her...love it!

During our walk

There has only been one hiccup so far - that is that she doesn't fully trust me when she's loose.  Approaching her in the pasture is not something that she always allows (even when there is no pressure, no halter/rope, and cookies involved).  For the last few days, I have been letting her graze in the barnyard while I clean her stall.  When I'm done, I call her and walk her to the pasture gate to let her out.  Yesterday she decided that barnyard grass was much better than pasture grass so I went to get her halter. As soon as I grabbed her halter, she took off for the pasture gate.  Hmm...whatever.  Put her halter back and started walking to the pasture gate - so she proceeded to pretend that she was a wild child and bolted for the trailers.  Okaaaaaaay...I opened the gate and called for her - she blazed by me (like she thought I was trying to trap her maybe?) and did a sliding stop about 30 feet out when she realized that I had a cookie that was now being fed to another horse.  I'm not too sure what to think about this.  She is completely relaxed around me at other times and even when loose in the round pen - heck, this morning she even let me and Heather rinse out her goopy eye with no fuss. Perhaps when she gets to know me better, she'll trust that I, in fact, do not eat horse.  We'll see.