Like doing a jigsaw

Some more of the jigsaw of Radar's tiny brain became apparent today when we went back to the farm ride. Thank goodness, he was more than happy to jump, right from the off, so nothing has been ruined by our less than successful hunt last Saturday. In fact at one point the path goes straight on and slightly to the right of the path is a rolltop. I felt him look for it, so I held the reins on the buckle and sat and waited to see when he would do. He veered slightly right, trotted, cantered and jumped the rolltop. It couldn't be any clearer than that what he wants to do in life, could it?

Anyway, back to understanding him. He really does have a tiny brain. If he was a computer we would say he was very short of RAM with a slow CPU clock speed. When he has the "we are going fast" program loaded, he doesn't have enough room to keep "we are jumping with style" program loaded too, and his CPU is not running fast enough to page it in. So half way round the ride, when he was very focussed on having another whizz, he began to misjudge his striding to the fence. It was a very illuminating moment, and explained an awful lot to me about how to continue to train him - wait until "we are having a gallop in company" has settled down and is taking up less RAM before I ask him to jump!

We had a lovely relaxed ride today, just for the fun of it. I think he enjoyed it as much as I did.

C