It's in the post!

Well if I hadn't felt how confused George was the first time I ever suggested that he should flex or bend, I would never believe it now. He has not only already learnt to flex as soon as he is asked, he offers to do it before he's asked. And he maintains it too. He is now doing complete circuits of the barn, with 10 m circles, in a lovely relaxed, long outline and the softest of contact on the bit. In walk and in trot. I'll try the canter again when I have more space, but I'll eat my hat if it hasn't improved in line with the walk and trot. What a clever, clever boy he is.

He was very silly today though. I have a haynet hung up in the barn on a rope. I have to hook it up onto the ledge while I ride so that I don't catch a foot in it. He's done it before, but today he was in a silly mood and he completely panicked about it and ran away. I shouted at him and that REALLY freaked him out. I have no idea who will shout at him in future, so I'm going to be working on desensitising him to that. There's no point in avoiding shouting at him, he'll be much better off if he learns that it won't hurt him.

Mind you, when I say he panicked all he does is rattle his feet on the floor and dash ten yards and stop. Silly old duffer!

I also schooled Jazz, which was fun and uneventful. He did the trick he's tried twice before - getting through 30 minutes of work and then suddenly finding the door terrifying. This is clearly an evasion to get out of more work when he's tired. I laughed at his lack of guile in repeating the same trick a third time, stayed away from the door, got the canter left I wanted in a couple of minutes and stopped.

I posted his first entry, let's hope first of many, today. Just in time, because he is so rapidly dropping off all the daft behaviour that you'll be bored to tears of this diary unless I have something else to report!


C.