Sage has made some incredible progress this last week. She is leading like a champion. However, picking up feet is still something that we really have to work on. She doesn't mind touching down by her feet, but she knows when you want her to pick up her foot and this makes her nervous. My goal is to be able to have her trimmed by my farrier in 4 weeks. He'll work with her even though she is a bit shy, but I'd like it to be a good experience for her. I would trim her myself, but her feet have a few shape problems and I want to make sure that she gets started on absolutely the right track.
But back to the positive...Sage learned to wear a saddle pad on Sunday! It was a bit tricky at first, but she settled down and was wearing a saddle pad in a 20 minute session. First, I tied Brandy in the arena with us. Sage seems to really appreciate seeing things done to other horses and learns a lot from that, so I took the saddle pad on and off Brandy several times. I let Sage sniff the pad on Brandy, which of course made her snort, and then I worked on trying to get it over her neck and back. She was surprisingly quite good despite the snorting. Here are some pictures:
I've gotten to work with her a few more times this week so far, and she's learned to lead away from the other horses (to where she can't see them), walk calmly through several types of gates, and stand on the rubber mats to be groomed.
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