Cross your fingers!

Today I am finally going to meet my 3 assistant wranglers for the summer! Camp starts in exactly a week so I'm hoping to get a little head start by giving them stuff to think about over the next 7 days.

However! Cross your fingers that Lacey behaves herself! In the last two years, she's never been ridden by anyone other than me off the lunge line and I'm not sure how she'll react to them trying to get her to do things like I do. I'm sure she's not going to blow up or something, she just might ignore them, which could get interesting. She does that when we're around other people. She ignores them completely and totally focuses on me, which is cute and good, but sometimes I wish she'd rely a little less on me and trust other people too.
I'm just going to do a little walking with each of them, since 2 of them haven't ridden in years and the other one talks a big talk that I'm sure stems from someone telling him he's a great rider too much so we'll see if he actually knows what he's doing.
I guess, on the plus side, with the kid that talks a big talk, I'll know if he knows what he's doing if he can get Lacey to listen to him and do what he says.

I'm mostly just hoping to pinpoint things that need work and things I can encourage them to practice thinking over this next week, like visualizing themselves riding with heels down and what that feels like, etc.

I'm almost tempted to not free lunge Lacey and see what they do since she's a lot more energetic when you just hop on, but I don't think I'll be that much a jerk. I think I'm going to free lunge her, then hop on bareback and do a test run before they get to the farm, then by the time they get there she'll be in "working mode."

Anyway, wish us luck!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you. I bet she'll be fine, maybe not the first day, but she'll settle in.

Lacey was amazing! She was so perfect. She did everything they asked her to do willingly and did nothing they didn't ask her to do. It was great, a few times one or the other of them would get her into a corner of the arena and forget to ask her to turn, well, she didn't turn on her own, she would just stop like "ok, if that's what you want!"
The time I was the most thrilled with her about was when one of the girls got on and she was leaning forward really badly. Well, Lacey is very in tune to weight shifts, so naturally, she started trotting. And then, once the girl sat up straight, Lacey went right back down to a walk. It was a great teaching tool to show this girl why she needed to sit up straight. I was so proud.

Camp (training week) actually starts in a week, this was just a pre-training week training session. Camp starts next Saturday and Lacey will be moving up there on the Monday of that week. So exciting! She is going to love it, I think.

Wow, sounds like Lacey is going to be a wonderful horse to teach with, that is so great!!