This is working!

The strategy to provoke Jazz into a reaction and then make him give it up is working so fast that it's astonishing. Today we did half an hour's work with some good progress in walk/canter/walk , some long rein and then I got off. I fetched a water tank, the kind people have in their loft (it was empty of course!). I put it close to the wall so that he would have to walk between the wall and the tank - a real provocation if he felt at all frightened of it. He went around in one direction and only just moved his head to look at it. I'm happy for him to do that - I don't want him brain dead, just obedient :-)!

I turned him round and he backed off it big time. I wondered why on earth he would do that, since it hadn't moved, when I realised that this way around it had an "eye" - the drain hole was a white ring in black plastic. I tapped him with the whip three times and he walked straight past it. He walked right up to it and stuck his head into it. He stood completely still while I used my stick to turn it over on its side :-0 Then he trotted past it in both directions, and we stopped and he got a LOT of praise!!!!

I don't know why he is suddenly open to taking his confidence from me. It seems that he needed a whole year with me to know whether to trust me or not. And he was upset for days after he was such a bad boy at the showjumping that time. I think he felt a bit "abandoned" because he could tell that I didn't like him any more. It seems to have made him open to the suggestion that he should do as I say to keep me liking him. I know I backed off this kind of strategy a year ago because it just made him bolt for freedom, but the timing is right now.

Zippy was cold backed today and he was a wonderful boy. The saddle was freezing and he hunched his back when I got on. He was clearly uncomfortable, but he also seemed to be fighting with himself not to be too silly and disturb my balance. What a lovely boy for his age, eh? He could just have dumped me in the dirt in a trice, but he wanted not to. Doesn't that bode well for his future training?

I shall go off to work with a smile on my face tomorrow, and hope to get to the farm ride some time over the weekend with Jazz.

C.

ps Jazz was, of course, completely sound today. That's a relief because the last two times that he has worked the foot hard he went lame two days later. If he had done it again this time I was going to have him x-rayed to make sure we didn't have a minor fracture, but it looks as though my daily spraying with Tesco thin bleach have done the trick and removed the last infection from his frog. WHEW!