Sophie's Orientation Day!

So here is the first post of many that I hope will show my progress with my new project- Sophie (aka the Cowboy lookalike horse!) She was delivered here to Kings River today so that we could start our training. Sophie is a completely un-broke 7 year old Arabian mare. She hasn't even had a halter on, feet trimmed or anything! Needless to say, I think I have my work cut out for me!

We had our first round penning session after lunch (and after the crazy thing settled down a little bit). She did pretty good for the first 20 minutes, and then she saw the horses out in the pasture....it took another 20 minutes to get her attention back on me. But by the end, I was able to approach and retreat up close to her side and get her looking at me consistently. It's a good start :) But tomorrow I think I might just speed things up a bit and rope her. This way I will be much faster and at being able to halter her...I really need to doctor her eye! It's not life threatening or anything, just needing a good cleaning at least. It puts the pressure on me to get the job done and have her desensitized enough that I can get my hand up there. She'd just run away and laugh at me right now if I tried anything like that!

Also, this is day 1 of my pre-mustang Challenge that I am giving myself. After 100 or so days with this mare I am going to see where she's at and see if I can't re-home her. I figure if I can ride this crazy beast, anything is possible!!