The thinking horse

My past behavior has shown that I am a reactive horse.  Yep I would react then think, usually when thinking was too late.  The DOR has commented several times in the past month that it seems that I now think more than react.
Today I proved she is right.

We were in the arena practicing for the clinic and playing with the soccer ball.  The ball got stuck in a corner and the DOR got a "carrot stick" to try and work it out of the corner.  Now usually getting the carrot stick off the fence would upset me, not today.  We worked together for quite a bit to get the ball unstuck with no success, but I did not get frustrated like I usually would.  The DOR then had me working on going back to the fence to put the carrot stick back-something I have never done.  As we were working on this a tractor came rolling by the arena, no big deal.  About a minute later a lady on a bike rode right by us, I kept it together.  We were working on the fence that was just across from the pasture the Icelandics were in and they were running like silly buggers...whatever.  Just as we were right about where we needed to be to hang the carrot stick up a sprinkler head blew off the line in the pasture.  Now that was too much, I blew some marbles and skittered a bit sideways.  I stopped and stared, blowing marbles, and the DOR petted me telling me how good I was.  If this had happened before my accident and all of my rehab I would have bolted, bucked, and sent the DOR to the moon.  She is so proud of the thinking horse that I have become.

Enjoy the day and don't forget to hug your DOR!