What she's like

I dropped Aria off for race training. She has not been started under saddle yet. She is a nice horse to handle. She leads, ties, stands for the farrier, wears a blanket in winter, etc. She’s not hard to clip. Aria is very bright and personable. She likes people, but she knows what she wants and has no fear of expressing her opinion. Attention is her big thing, but she’s also very competitive. She’s very dominate in the pasture which surprised me. Her mother is not and is fairly submissive. Aria’s only a 3 year old, but she was kicking her way through my mares so I moved her into the more aggressive crabby mare pasture out of the sweeter mares’ pasture. I figured they would keep her in line. I was wrong, very wrong. She quickly became number one. Her goal was to be first standing at the gate for feed and attention. Aria turned pea green jealous if another horse was chosen first to have it's feet trimmed or groomed. My fat now not so crabby mares were happy to see this young whippersnapper leave for school. But the experience of having a 3 yr old whup up on them has made them all get along better and nicer.

Aria should be nice to train, but I expect she will have a tantrum at some point when she expresses her opinion about doing something her way. She should enjoy work, but she will probably tell them how to do it once she figures out galloping is fun and is comfortable under saddle. I don’t consider this a weakness, although I know some folks would. She has an opinion about things and will learn sometimes it is not appropriate to express it. I consider this part of her personality as an inner strength which makes me think she'll have the heart to run. Some horses need to gain confidence and galloping helps them, but Aria is Miss confidence. Racehorses cannot be scared on the track or of other horses. She won’t be scared.