first time saddling

This is my baby.  Ok, so maybe she's Georgia's (yes, she's back!) and my baby.  And technically her name is Rose Blossom, but I just call her baby.

We decided since she turned two in February and we've ground worked her to death, that she was finally ready to be saddled.  Yes, she is still very small, but her mama was a pony.

In fact, this is her mama right here and as you can see, they are about the same height.  Baby just has a little more filling out to do.

Georgia and I did this together since she's the one who got her to stop kicking at people and taught her to lead and I taught her a few more things once Georgia was gone for the winter.

The first step is the blanket, which can be kind of scary, so Georgia sort of rubbed it all over her.

The next layer was the saddle pad.

And finally...

The saddle!

She had to check it out and see what it was all about.  But she really stood still the whole time, which was AWESOME!

We decided to leave all the extras on the saddle because she doesn't know any differently and I figure she needs to be used to those saddlebags anyhow.

I walked her around to get her used to the stirrups and saddlebags bouncing against her sides before I let her loose.

Now, I don't have any pictures of her trotting around loosely because Isobel took a video, which I will try to post the next time I'm at Dow's house.  (We only have so much bandwidth at the ranch and video uploads take too much.)

But, I have to say this.  She went one direction trotting and it didn't bother her a bit.  Going the other direction, she pushed herself into a lope (the speed after jogging/trotting, but before running) and it did get to her a little bit.  She gave a little rear/buck a few times, but quit when she realized it wasn't coming off.  And having seen her really go at it in the corral, her bucks were nothing.

I was SOOOOOO proud of her!

Next step?  Getting ON!  Stay tuned!