Go hang out with your horse

This was our first trip off the property under saddle:

L was 6 years old. We'd been showing for years and she'd been off the property on countless occasions. But not under saddle. I'm not a professional horse trainer. When L came home she was halter broke and that's it. I trained L under the supervision of a skilled trainer. I'm sure she thinks she trained me but that's another story.
Canadian Horses are wonderful family animals. They're very smart, they're sensible, they're good natured. I've also heard they're not for beginners. That may be so. Some say L is smarter than I am and it's hard to argue otherwise. She does know people stuff better than I know horse stuff.
I'm not a beginner - but I'm not an expert either.
L is a bold, dominant mare. Training was...challenging. For a long time I thought I'd *never* get it. It was frustrating. It was scary. Occasionally satisfying. Always it was educational.

This trip was a good experience. It was a busy show with one of L's herd mates (M - I haven't introduced M yet) showing under saddle. The morning was H/J over fences and later in the day was English and Western Pleasure and the WTC classes. L and I were there just to school.
It was late July. It was hot. Competition was outside, warmup was in the indoor arena. It was pandemonium! L and I walked up to the door, peeked in and I said oh crap, no no, we're not going in there, no sir, I'm gonna be killed in there.

We took a couple of circles in the parking lot, peeked in the door again, took a couple more circles, peeked in the door again, sucked it up, and followed our herd mate M in.

L was, of course awesome. Oh, she was a handful. No question about that.

This is a very poor quality picture but I think it caught the moment. You can see just a little of the sheer chaos going on in the background. It was really scary:

L is fully engaged. She's paying attention. Oh, she's making me work at it! But she's being real good. She had her big trot going for a good 20 minutes before she was ready to relax and work. We both came out of there dripping. I was tired. She wasn't.

We spent the rest of the day wandering the property, watching people, watching horses, dismounting, mounting, dismounting, etc.

And nobody got hurt!

It was a huge milestone for both of us.

And I remember learning something I found hugely significant that day too. There was a girl on some kind of chestnut horse. Thoroughbred or maybe a thoroughbred cross. They poked around the property most of the day, watched horses, visited people, got stuff from the canteen truck, all while mounted bareback with just a halter and the two of them just had some kind of "most natural thing in the world" going on. I commented to my companion, J, about it. Now J has been handling horses her entire life, she was riding before she could walk, and she just matter of factly says oh that's one of the summer camp kids. They're on those horses all day long.

Hmmm.

I spent a lot of time on L the rest of that summer. Not just lessons and schooling time but just poking around doing nothing. We'd watch lessons. Run down to the street. Walk around the street. Lap the hay field. Walk in the woods. Run in the woods. Eat some grass. And go do it all again. My point being rather than just doing our lessons and schooling in the ring, we started just hanging around doing "stuff". Every chance we had. For hours and hours.

The lesson of course is if you want being with your horse to be a natural comfortable thing, for both of you, well, just go be with your horse. A lot.