Well, today was a whole new day - *Tessa was as good as she could be - I was pretty happy with her and I think she was pretty pleased with herself too. I am still not ruling out pain, and I will be on the alert for it as we go along but here is what I am thinking is going on...
*Tessa was born here, she is 8 years old now. She has had 2 foals for me, so even though she has been under saddle since she was 3, she has had at least 2, probably closer to 3 years off to have babies, so that means she has only really had 2 years of riding training, which is not as much as one would "assume" in an 8 year old horse.
She is a dominant mare - no question about that, like her mother, she is the herd boss. She is a good boss, but still, I do think she takes her role very seriously and even though she doesn't have a foal now, she still thinks she needs to take care of the babies and in fact they are usually hanging out with her rather than their mothers! So the idea that she is challenging me is not that far fetched. And more than that, she is 8, which in horse years is considered "mature". I know that in stallions there are some that will end up gelded when they are 6 - 8 years old due to them becoming "mature". I wonder if that is partly what is going on with Tessa and also that she may be becoming more set in her ways now.
Finally, I do train and ride a lot of horses, but in the last 10 years I have only had a couple of horses that I ride and train on a consistent basis. One of them is *Sandman, of course, and one was my mare Gracie - she is deceased and now *Tessa, she is a horse that I will always keep and so I have had her longer than many of my other horses. So it could simply be that *Tessa and I are working through some "rough spots" that everyone goes through with their horses.
I love *Tessa sincerely - she is a lovely horse, both to look at and to handle - she is totally worth the effort and I will figure this out - hope to share it with you as we go along!
Shelly in Summerland, BC Canada
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