Happy New Year

After a very good night in the local pub with all our village friends where our horses dentist lead a very good rock band, we got up a bit late !!
Arriving at the yard there was a note to the effect that the local hunt was going to be passing our way at 2 pm. From experience this does not put the horses into a good learning frame of mind to say the least. As a result I only had a short time to train a horse and selected Billy. We went to the outdoor school and after the usual "touch all over" etc etc I started working on confidence with him. I felt that this was best done by doing a very simple pattern until he relaxed. I chose circles as it does not require me to put any pressure on him at all as long as he maintains gait and direction. Only if he breaks either do then correct as gently as possible but as firm as required.
He did a few circles quite nicely, but then tended to become unconfident, stop and pull back at the same point on each circle. At this point I gently but persistently asked for the circle to continue. After several attempts at this I was still not getting the desired confident circle so just to give him something else to think about I started walking myself, away from the spooky spot to turn them into travelling circles. Of course moving away from the difficult point on the circle also reduced the pressure. Soon Billy was circling nicely and with confidence, even when I travelled back to the spooky end of the school. We then worked a bit more on transitions from trot to walk on the circle (walk to trot is easy) which after a while of rewarding the slightest try (a slower trot) started to work very nicely. Billy is always so keen to please I really think he could not believe that all I wanted was a slight change of speed !
To progress towards riding him I then started playing with the mounting block which started with me doing lots of step aerobics up and down the block as he stood next to me. Once I was exhausted and he was calm I got him to stand next to me whilst I stood on the top step and gave him lots of nice scratches and rubs (remember we NEVER pat horses). I then leant over him and rubbed the other side. He was so confident with this I tried putting one leg up onto his hind quarters. As he was very happy with this I repeated the operation several times and then called it a day.
This was a big move towards fully backing Billy and so a very good day.
p.s I sat on Filly again yesterday and she was even calmer than before. No attempts at biting my shoes at all, a few nice lateral flexions ( albeit with more pressure on the rope than ideal), and a few little hind quarter yields.
I wish all readers and their horses a Happy New Year!!