I love my mare...

... I think.  While she is fantastic and beyond hilarious, sometimes she's just plain infuriating.  Like today, when I went to mount up and she was like "No thanks, I think I'd rather barge through you than stand still.  Back up?  Naw, I feel like walking circles around you."  Grrrr.... bad mare.  She got in MAJOR trouble for that little show, and by the time I went to get on again she wasn't thinking about being so rude.  I do believe that discipline like that is important, a horse should not walk all over people.  However, it's also important to do it promptly and correctly.  When I asked her to back up and she ignored me, I asked again but emphasized it with a tap from the whip on her chest.  When she barged through me, I popped her with the reins, and made her back up to where she was before.  Then we practiced.  Walk, halt, trot, back up all RIGHT when I asked and lone behold, she was perfect.  No more walking all over the humans.... for now.
Tomorrow we're heading up to take a turn aorund an XC course, so we kept today to a walk hack.  25 minutes of trails, fields, and pathways with not a gallop in sight -_-  Cadence and I seemed to have similar opinions about this.  Her thought process was like "Hill? let's trot up it.  Oh lookey!  Anoter one!  That means we MUST trot down it, and attempt to break to a canter"  This is why you don't hack a pony after a day off.  I learned my lesson.  All things considered, she was fantastic; just a bit keen.  Although she does have this bad habit of wandering off of the path.  Several of our forest trails are lined by logs on the ground, and on more than one occasion she mysteriously wandered over them for no apparent reason.   Then again, she came very close to walking straight into a tree on two separate occasions.  Such a smart pony.