It only took two years!

We got there at last with Ace. It only took nearly two and a half years to learn how to manage him so that he stopped spooking at the letters. He won the Novice 34 today with a score of 67.5%. He was a very good boy.

When I took him into the arena before the bell rang, he was looking hard at the letters. I kept my cool, kept him looking at the letter and let his body swing out just like I do at home. Then I just about had time to test a shoulder in to stop him swinging his body out, and he accepted it. So I did the same all through the test whenever he was backing off a letter, which he tried many times, and it worked there too. Next time I shall know that I can ask for more activity and still correct/pre-empt any spooking.

The quality of his work is not as good as he does at home, but you'll get the idea of how well he is coming on. To imagine what an eyefull he is, you need to know that in that hat and boots I am the best part of five foot ten tall. He's a very big horse.

I am particularly thrilled with the second medium trot and I think you'll see why. He's just started offering that at home and I had no idea whether he would do it in a competition. He wouldn't do the first one likeit because he did not want to extend towards K, one of his least favourite letters :-)

I'm chuffed to bits with this. All the problems in the test, such as they are, are due to lack of attention and not to any physical difficulty that he has with the movements. So I am going to go affiliated next time at Elementary to keep our minds busy.

So here's the video:

http://youtu.be/-4lh2LzoUx4



C

ps there are parts of the video where he looks as if his left hip is being carried higher than his right one. I think it's a trick of the light on the way that his coat was lying on his bottom (he's not clipped) but I will be checking it out. There are times when I am also sat slightly to the right, a longstanding (or sitting?) problem of mine.