Annie is doing fabulous! She has fully recovered from her panic after she bucked her rider off, and I got to witness her second canter under saddle. She is so beautiful under saddle — she has very beautiful movement, a lovely canter. She has this incredible neck…its very flexible (they call her the gumby horse), and she does have this neat trick of turning around and nipping your knee when you put the leg on and she’s feeling sassy.
Annie’s such a funny horse — and so incredibly sensitive. She will still occasionally revert to mildly aggressive behaviors — mainly just ear pinning and nipping — when she feels threatened. She is simply incredibly insecure still, but as I said she has latched onto Andrea’s assistant who has done most of the work with her, and she LOVES her. She also is a horse who thrives on praise…she soaks up every “good girl” like a sponge. When she was testing out her canter under saddle, she was having trouble taking the canter and wanting to trot faster. It ended up being a group effort to get her to canter, and then once she had it we were all gushing over her and she looks so incredibly pleased with herself when she was done…it was so cute!
Here’s a few photos from after her ride:
And video!
And I just had to post this…those of you who knew Annie when she first came to us, and how you couldn’t touch her head at all and she would pin her ears and try to bite, know what a change it is to see Annie progress into this. This is Annie and Allison sharing a moment (although she still has a little vixen in her and WILL nip if given the chance…as you see at the very end of the clip. But she’s mostly a super sweet horse and really loves attention):
