Tick tock.

We saw the surgeon today and he said that he has never fitted a bigger aortic valve into a human before - 27 millimetres! Clockwork hubby doesn't do anything by halves, does he? We have a date of Sunday to come home, provided they get his blood clotting  indicator to 1.5 and his heart rythmn gets a bit more steady that it was yesterday. I haven't ridden today. He was sounding a bit down when I rang this morning - the euphoria of surviving has worn off! - so I have spent most of the day sitting quietly with him in his room.

Anne posted wondering whether anyone else had experienced stroppy behaviour from Ace before and not told me. I don't think so, because he did it out on a hack and  I am reasonably sure that he has never hacked out before he came to me, and certainly never alone.

The sequence of events was that he began to suggest over the last couple of weeks that he would really rather stay at home, but was happy to be told that wasn't possible. Since he was moved rapidly from Germany to Holland and Holland to Manchester and from there to me, this is the first time in his ridden life that he has had strong connections with other horses and been asked to leave them.

Yesterday he saw two lambs on the outside of a fence blarting for their mother and running up and down. He has always been anxious about skipping lambs, and this pair did genuinely scare him a little. But after one got back into the field, and  having walked beside me past the other a few times, he was no longer scared. In the end the second lamb got back in too, so then there was no justification for any fear at all, and there was no fear that I could sense, just mutiny.

At that point, it was clear that he had simply made up his mind not to go any further from home. On the arena, I would turn  him and do something else. On a single track road, it's either give in, or confront him.

I felt it was a good time to knock disobedience on the head. He does have a stubborn streak and he has to learn to control it. He absolutely knew, by this time,  what he was doing and why it was causing the result that it was. When he gave in, I could feel the huge effort of will that he was putting into doing what I wanted and not what he wanted. As soon as I got that, I took him home, and I do hope he connects the two things - behave, and you get what you want more quickly.

I think that this is probably the first battle of wills for two other reasons than the hacking one. First, that he has never been fit and well before - the feet growing to the bottom now are in very bad condition and his new growth of tail is twice as thick as the bottom half, showing how poorly he was fed last autumn. Second - he has only been broken just over seven months, and it has taken him time to learn his own strength.

So I'm pretty sure that he is a genuinely unspoilt young man with plenty of character, and that if I do the same ride tomorrow I am unlikely to have the same problem. If it's not raining and Clockwork Hubby doesn't need me then I will be trying it.

For another reason I was happy to battle it out with him yesterday. I feel very confident now that he has no seriously extreme behaviour. Getting off when he reared was a precaution rather than a necessity. He is nothing like Jazz, who was geniunely, if completely unreasonably, terrified of the things he would not pass out on a hack. He is nothing like Smartie, who was a danger to himself and to me. He is, really, a bit of a wuss who just thought he could have his own way for a while. He didn't bolt for home, buck, back up into danger, kick out or do anything  seriously unseating. I feel, at last, as if I am finally getting rid of the ghost of Smartie.

Fingers crossed for a dry morning.

C