Well. It's been a while since my last post but, I promise I'm not dead!
There has been steady progression with the patterns (figure 8 and touch it).
My horse is amazing, as always...
Jumping has been a bit of an issue, though... She'd jump over the barrels and then have a freak out if I didn't disengage her immediately. So I brought it up with my lovely Mini-LP (Fran,darling) and asked for some advice on how to set it up for success. She suggested that I play Friendly with my cow-flavoured barrels to rid my own body of any tension/expectations/fear I had about jumping so that Bug would look at me all "Oh..no we're jumping?! I do-... Oh.. Okay, no big deal. You seem to be cool with it so.. I CAN FLY." .. Well the last part was an total anthropomorphism but I can do that because my horse really is a kite. Mwaha!
Anyway, when I got the suggestion.. I knew it was coming so all I could do was face-palm and make 100% sure that I was about to act really silly.
"What exactly do you mean by Friendly, Fran?"
"You know exactly what I mean by Friendly, Katie. Touch your barrels, throw a string over your barrels and show those barrels how much you love them!"
....-snort.-
So! Katieanne walks out to her pasture all excited and dragging mother in tow for this particular session. (I knew it was going to be amazing.)
We get out there, I hook the Bug up on my 22 and suddenly..
"Barrels!"
I skip merrily over to my beloved barrels.--
..Keep in mind my mother has *no* idea what I'm doing..
-- proceed to sit down and love all on my cow flavoured barrels.
I rubbed them! I laughed! I told them how amazing they were!
I did everything to those barrels short of buying them dinner and putting the moves on them.
By the end of this session my mother and I had dissolved into gigglefits and my horse was looking at me as if I was in need of some serious special help.
"..Oh not those barrels again I just don't thi--...... Uh... Woman, have you lost your marbles? What're you doing?! I'm over HERE. ...Why aren't you petting ME like that?"
She kept getting closer and closer and her expression was the funniest thing I do believe I have seen all week.
She sniffed the barrel I was leaning on and nudged it away before promptly sticking her nose into my tummy for a few cuddles. Goood times.

Ended it there, sitting on the ground and cuddling.
When we jumped next session, both of us were more relaxed and she jumped quicker, without as much hesitation and afterward proceeded to scoot the barrels into her own little formation. Then we played some sort of weaving game of my own design which was a good laugh.
She learns so quickly, it never ceases to amaze me.
Other than that.. We've been hanging out a lot lately rather than having active sessions. Mostly for my benefit.
Christmas is quickly approaching and the weather is insanely mild around here as of late (61 F right now!) so maybe I'll get more playtime in soon.

But for now, I have to leave for class in about thirty minutes and I haven't eaten anything yet.
Keep it natural,

Katie