Lady: A diamond in the rough

I worked with my mentor today and she loves to use the long lines. I’m not exactly an expert so I was at Lady’s head while she handled the long lines. Lady didn’t seem overly concerned about the long lines on either side of her and after walking and trotting around the arena we decided to try bringing the long line behind the haunches near the hocks to see her reaction.

At first she seemed not to notice and we walked along to the left fine. Left happens to be her favorite direction. Go figure. It’s that way for a lot of race horses. But to the right she seemed genuinely confused as to what to do. She took several hesitant steps forward and I was prompting her with clucking. The universal signal to a horse to do something and this case she started to trot. In place!. She lowered her croup, bent her hocks and delivered many text book steps of piaffe. My mentor urged me to walk on until she saw my mouth hanging open and began watching more what Lady was doing. She’s piaffing nicely!, she exclaimed. Yes, yes she is. I guess we know a way to work this I said with a twinkle in my eye. Oh my my, Lady, you just made this trainer’s heart go pitter patter!