So after two weeks off, Fiona ended up being terrific- we had a spook or two, and she was quick at the start, but I was expecting something of the kind. She is a TB, after all, and it's cold today, and she hadn't been out yet, and she hadn't been ridden in a fortnight, and all those things could have conceivably added up to a rodeo. But instead she was just a little quick, a little distracted, and a little resistant, but we worked through all of these things, and by the end of the ride we were getting some really good moments. I am very vocal when I'm schooling on my own, so I was singing and whistling and exhorting her to work with me and quoting random things that seemed to fit. I think it amuses her. It keeps her attention on me without me having to badger her, too, which is a help- I think she will get in the habit of paying attention to me all the time when we're working, but she's definitely out of the habit right now and I don't want to be constantly nudging her to the point where she tunes it out.

Annoyingly, she overreached and hit the healed overreach from just before I bought her in the Fall and opened it again, which was unfortunate, but she was good about me spraying it with Blu-Cote (she picked up her hind to kick at it, realized I was still bent over there spraying, and put it back down until I was done) so she got a big handful of treats straight from my pocket- the only time I ever feed by hand, in fact. (Horses that learn expect hand-fed treats all the time get incredibly pushy and hard to handle, so we mostly just give them treats in their feed buckets.) It's not a bad knock, she's just opened the big crusty bump again, and it was hardly even bleeding. If it was properly cold and snowy I might not have even bothered to spray it, but as muddy as it is I don't want it getting infected. I'll have to throw bell boots on her when I ride on Thursday- I hope Cam's old ones fit, because I don't have another pair.