Your starter for ten.

Yesterday I hacked Ace up to my   friend's for breakfast. He was his normal spooky self, but I made him walk over the patches in the road that he did not want to walk over, and I made him stay on the line I put him on when he started to look at anything along the side of the road. He accepted these corrections though I would not say that he was happy about it.

Today I took him out onto the arena and applied the same level of discipline to the blue barrels, which he was all prepared to be stupid about. I had to tread a very fine line between provoking him enough to make him buck or rear, and making him do what he was told, but we got there.  I could eventually walk him past, trot him past and then do walk/trot transitions past. He was not amused, but he did consent to stay 'with' me and do it and I was pleased with myself at how I handled things, calmly and coolly.

I finished on some canter figure of eight with change through trot but I made a mistake and asked for the first change without first letting him do complete circles in canter. I had thought that he was warmed up enough, but obviously not because he got unbalanced, napped to the gate and reared. I was not amused at that, but it was partly my own fault, though there is no doubting what a prima donna he can be!

I am still waiting for the trainer to respond to my email, and meanwhile my friend has given me a good idea to help me decide what should happen with Ace. She has suggested that I score my enjoyment each time I ride him out of ten. This isn't a score of how well he went, it's a score of whether I enjoyed riding him. He could score 1 out of 10 for how he behaved and I could score the same session 10 out of 10 for enjoyment if I enjoyed the battle!
So that's what the scores at the bottom of my blog will be, so that I can look back on them and see how much I am enjoying him, so that I will know if I have reached a point where I need to find him a  new home.

C

5th July   6/10
6th July  6/10