Dinahs adventures in the round pen

Yesterday morning I took Dinah out of her pen and walked her to the round pen. She was very well behaved and walked into the round pen without hesitation. Once in the round pen she got a little stressed but I went back to what she knows, walking, halting and backing up, and she calmed right down. It was still pretty muddy in the round pen so I did a little longing and then decided to end on a good note. She also got to see another horse being ridden around outside the round pen. I feel very fortunate that Dinah is so forgiving and when I make mistakes she let's me know without a kick or a bite! It is amazing to have a horse that is a "clean slate", I know that everything I do with her will stay with her for the rest of her life. It is a lot of pressure and I wish I could do it without making mistakes, but I am thankful to have a horse a good as Dinah to work with. I returned in the afternoon and repeated what I had done in the morning, except this time there were a lot more distractions. There were several horses out riding around the property, a few being groomed, and two loose horses. Dinah took it all in stride, and maintained everything we had worked on in the morning. She was afraid of noises that she couldn't see behind the round pen, but we worked through it and she calmed down. After the round pen I took her to the wash rack and introduced her to water. She was very curious and good about having her front feet washed but she wasn't so sure about the back feet. We will need to work more on that. When we were walking back to her pen, the loose horses ran up behind her and she just calmly waited for instruction from me. We turned around and walked the other way back home, I was very happy with the way she handled this situation. Once back in her pen, I groomed her and worked on putting the saddle pad on her back. She got a bit scared at one point so I backed off and allowed her to approach the saddle pad. I then put it on her back a few more times and quit for the day. Many of the other Norco trainers already have their horses saddled, but I think Dinah is learning fast and progressing well. If anyone who is reading the blog has suggestions or exercises I could work on with Dinah please leave them in comments. Thanks for reading!