Joey day 19

We got started today late. It all went really well though. I warmed him up and we went for a ride. I thought He did well. He gets real soft and responsive. He has a hard streak about him though. I did also notice that he is a scaredy cat. He flinches sideways at almost anything. So I know that I need to get him out. All my training has to occur outside the pen from here on out. We had a good ride and then we were on our way back, got in front of the other horses and Raven whinnied, then Joey whinnied. I took him across the road into the field and we had a workout in the last ten minutes. We cantered in circles in both directions. What is odd is that he will be soft on the circle until he gets to the placed where we are closest to the place where we go home and he then locks up and totally ignores my rein. It is only when I get him to swing his butt over that he then will follow my rein. I had him doings some serious disengaging in circles in both directions then let him relax. After that he was real soft and responsive. It seems to me then that I have to really demand that level of responsiveness earlier in the training session. I had him moving his butt and his shoulders real good and backing real good. Now it is refining things with him. It's kinda like when someone is sort of listening but just blowing you off. You wanna just slap them upside the head and wake em up. But you can't do that. So you improvise and with a horse it is moving their feet. That is what we did in the last ten minutes. Thus, we made more progress during that time then we did the rest of the session. We did refine other things we were working on and that was productive too, but not as intense as that last time. The result, a real softness and responsiveness and wishing I could keep going. I have learned, though, to quit when the going is good rather than push it farther and blow it. So we quit. Looking forward the next session.