It’s Monday, we got this! I encourage you to crush this, one of the first full week’s of the New Year. I don’t know about you, but I still don’t feel quite ready for 2026. I wish I did. I feel like I usually do a better job of having my end of year wrap up done, studied, evaluated for areas of improvement, with plans for the upcoming year, more done by now. I didn’t really even have a clear New Year’s Resolution. Last year I doubled down on my daily planner, and spent a good part of the year working in that thing for nearly an hour almost every day. Reviewing the last day, week, month, etc. Which was helpful and also burdensome. Right now I am feeling a bit more like going with the flow and not trying so hard. The only idea I do have, is that I noticed I often take better care of my animals, than I do myself. I think that is something I would like to improve on this year, without feeling selfish.

Yesterday we spent about 4 hours training the horses. I am so grateful for that. We started with about 2 hours working with Chilli and Natalia. Just the basics, halter, lead, short walk, for starters, then progressing to saddle, and some work in hand in the round pen. Chilli got used to having a rider on her back, in the saddle, but only very briefly at a time. After a while, Chilli started to get pretty hot, or overwhelmed by the stimulation, and we had to remove her saddle and turn her out. But she is a little younger than Natalia, for one, and has had a little less handling, for two, so we let her have some time out and simply unsaddled her and turned her back out into the corral.

We then double downed on Natalia, and worked her in side reins, and driving reins, while also lunging her. She did very well, but after a while she became also a little overwhelmed and dramatically reared up in hand in the long lines. I stopped our efforts to get her to move around the round pen, and shifted to seeing if I could get her to rear on command, instead. She didn’t really do it, but it at least distracted her from further escalating, and we took that as our cue she had also had enough for the day.

Next, we got Cesar. We groomed him, saddled him, worked him in the round pen with the Tabata timer, and then took turns riding him, for a total of about 40 minutes of work in the round pen, just practicing going around to the timer, standing still, and basically just practicing walk, trot, and halt. Nothing big. Other than a little head tossing at one point, he did actually pretty well. He was a little slow and reluctant to do too much. He did it though. And he didn’t buck at all or try to run off or any of his other tricks. He actually worked up a little sweat, and seemed still eager to do things at the end of the session. It went overall well I thought. He never even had to carry a person at a trot, so we went very easy on him.

Today I am grateful I got to live my passion a little yesterday and work on expanding the girls repertoire of behaviors. I am grateful it went well and no one got hurt and everyone had fun. I am grateful for this nice weather which is allowing us to get work done with the horses even though it’s the middle of winter. And if you like training stories like these, you are going to love the Mustang Journal. I chronicled the entire first year of us having the fillies, into a book I like to call the Mustang Journal. If you want to read that, let me know in the comments below, and we will figure out the best way to get that out to you.

​Thanks for being here you Animal Loving angel, and if it’s in your heart to help us fix our tractor and purchase our next huge load of hay, we could sure use all the help we can get, thanks in advance https://www.coloradogives.org/organization/Resqranch and make today the best day of your life!

Check out my YouTube channel for a daily "Good Morning!" from the rescues and lots of free tips and training resources. https://www.youtube.com/@the1drq