Perhaps a plan

Here is an excellent article from Eclectic Horseman.
https://eclectic-horseman.com/clearing-out-the-front-quarters/ With pictures!
Buck Brannaman teaching a very basic thing, getting your horse to go around you in a circle. Coulee is very not good at this. Her first instinct is to be suspicious and back up. Today when I work her I will be trying to perfect this. We had it going not bad a couple of weeks ago, but then she fell apart- perhaps from coming into heat? Who knows, but to me that's no excuse.
**** Just came in from working her. Much better day today. Although- in the pen at feeding time this morning she was as crabby as usual. However, in hand work was much better. I worked on the exercises in the above link, and it was helpful to have those images in mind. She actually did quite well.

I was able to also get one good liberty turn on the haunches to the right but as soon as I went to her right side and asked for the turn she got all crabby, so then I sent her around the pen.This time only about 10 minutes before she started join up- much better than yesterday!

Better expression and a more willing attitude. She was also more inclined to walk when  I asked her instead of just loping off like yesterday.
She is definitely in heat, so I had a discussion with my husband today about her future. He is adamant that he does not want me to ride her- although I think she will be fine to ride once we get on the same page with the ground work. I trust his intuition- he is rarely wrong when it comes to animals. His idea is that we should breed her- and as a side note here, after talking to the lady that bred her, this crabby attitude is not evident in any of her sisters, so I'm not too concerned about passing it on to her offspring. As well, Beamer has an exemplary disposition that so far has passed on to all his foals.
Once she foals, he wants me to sell her. I will continue the ground work with the goal of making her as safe as possible to handle. I am really hoping that being in foal will help to turn her around- it's been known to happen with crabby mares that after pregnancy they mellow out. We can only hope.
This could be interesting because I've wanted to try liberty work for a while now and what better chance than this.
I have the body work guy coming this afternoon, and he does kinesiology as well so I'll ask him a few questions about her. It would be lovely if all this crabby stuff had a physical source that could be dealt with. Because when she is good, she is very good but when she is bad she is nasty. And no curl on the middle of her forehead! (For those who remember the old nursery rhyme.) Actually, her curl (swirl) is off center to her left and high up. Remind me never to buy a horse with an off center swirl again.