After owning her for over a month, I finally got to ride my mare!
She has had sore withers from an incident in the shoeing stock. It happened just befor I bought her, on my day off, so I don't know exactly what happened, but apparently she reared before they could snug down the restraints and the slack allowed her to hit it pretty hard.
I have also been working on getting her to trust me.
I rode her out on the trail behind a group of customers. She did great! She didn't spook at anything, even when the dog came barreling out of the woods behind her. But she is definately full of herself! Prancing and dancing and just showing off and happy to be out and about. One of the customers kept turning around the whole ride to watch her! She kept saying how gorgeous she was. I will try to get some pics this weekend.
Later I tried the harness on her (we were told she was trained to drive) and it didn't faze her. Usually, if you put a bridle with blinders on, if they aren't used to it, they will twist their head around trying to see and startling at sounds behind etc. I drove her (nothing hitched, just in harness) down the driveway and back and it seems as if she has done it before. She wanted to go a bit faster than I wanted to walk behind, but I think with a little more work, I'll be able to hook her to the little 2 wheeled cart and then the wedding carriage.
I'll be riding her as much as possible to get her in shape.
