It’s been a looooooooooooooooong day!!!!

After winning the leading battle yesterday, and with it dawning a beautiful, windless day today I thought it would be really good timing for a loading lesson. I started at 9.25am. After 12 minutes I had all four feet on the ramp and thought I had it cracked. Then he got bored and started refusing to play. We blocked one side of the ramp with the landrover and he started rearing and carting me about. We blocked the other side with an old trailer and he was really cross, as if we had betrayed him. Hitting him achieved nothing but obstinacy. Bribery wasn't working either. Pressure/release did not work. Nothing worked. I finally gave up at 11.45am with him refusing to even approach the ramp. I put him in his stable with no food (he'd had no breakfast either - it was in the lorry).

I rode Tia out on a hack in the glorious sunshine. It was a pleasant, relaxing interlude :-)

Then I turned her out and left him in and we went out for lunch and to get some DIY bits. We got back two hours later to find him calm and cool. Over lunch we talked about tactics, which include starvation as a last resort. I thought it was too early to use that tactic, I've only ever had to do it once before with a horse whose loading had been ruined by race trainers. I didn't want to destroy his trust in me. I also thought that he had been really offended by blocking him in with the landrover, really insulted. It sounds daft, but that's how it seemed. So I decided to take away all the barriers and start again and leave it to him whether he joined me or not.

At 3pm, this time with only a headcollar on I led him to the ramp and he happily put his front feet on it. Gradually, by feeding him every time he took even a lean forwards, I got him so that he was putting his front feet into the box. This was all by food reward, the lead rein was slack the whole time. He did it three or four times to get food, then stopped and refused to do it again. I thought it would be good then to take him back off, and start again. He didn't think so. He refused to play and started swinging off to the right. I kept the circle going right so he ended up back at the ramp again and eventually he realised he needed to try for me. After a while I thought that there simply wasn't enough food in the bucket for him to think it was worth his while co-operating for much longer. So I went and got a couple of kilos, and started again. I was right! He came right up the ramp, put his front feet in, got given his feed and then without even being asked suddenly stepped right on with all four feet. It was ten past four!!!!

I let him eat plenty, then backed him off carefully (he won't turn round and come out forwards yet) and he's out in the field now with his girlfriend.

Cor, what a horse. He has the strongest personality I have ever come across. He has a very, very fine sense of justice and will not co-operate at all if he perceives that you have been unjust. If I did not reward him for making a small effort, he would not make the next one. So it was a very fine balance between rewarding him when he hadn't done what I asked and not rewarding him enough. But when I judged it right, he was prepared to do things that he was clearly worried about for me.

The challenge with this horse is to always keep him on my side. As long as we work together, I think we are going to be a fanatistic team. If he was with someone who couldn't keep him on their side, I think he could be a total monster when he's older. I'm pretty sure I can just about manage him though, I'm certainly enjoying trying :-)))))

C.