Rosie has been settling in nicely! On Wednesday, she got to join her new herd with Mistie & Iris. Aside from the initial & typical establishment of the pecking order, she's figured out her place at the hay bale & has figured out which feed bucket is hers.
She Round Pens quite nicely, though was a bit rusty on her inside turns initially. She has no issues with Desensitizing to the Lead Rope & Stick & String on her body. She was a bit reactive about slapping the ground with the stick & string but settled into that once she realized she wasn't being asked to move her feet. She did pretty well with Yield the Hindquarters. I'm not sure if she hadn't had any Yielding the Forequarters done with her previously or if she was extremely rusty. She did great with Lunging Stage 1 & had no issues moving off around me at a walk & picked up a nice trot when asked. I expected a bit higher energy from the things that you mentioned, but that may be strictly due to the saddle. We also touched on Flexing. Again, I'm not sure that she had been taught this previously as she wanted to move her feet a fair bit at first but did figure out that wasn't needed.
Overall, Rosie has been doing great! I haven't run across anything that raises red flags as of yet, just your typical young horse in the learning process & even that has been limited.
Next week, I'll continue to work on these groundwork exercises & add in some new ones before re-introducing the saddle so that she knows that I'm consistent in all that I'm asking of her & her confidence can continue to grow so that she's mentally ready to be saddled. I'll likely introduce Leading by the Feet & potentially Laying Down so that we build her confidence in areas that are particularly easy to get defensive in. Those exercises will set her up to ideally think through any of those moments should they come up once we begin to saddle.
Next week's update will be posted on Friday.