Still going strong!

I did a lot of riding in November on the bareback pad. We played with cones and going forward and bending. Unfortunately one day he spooked and I rolled of his back and landed hard; since I'm just using a bareback pad. He was being really relaxed and quiet and I let my guard down and bam, it was literally that fast.....my bad. He clearly felt bad about it and it took me 15min to convince him I could still get on. I did have to take a few days off, I no longer bounce like a little kid. But we are ok now!

I think the teeth being floated has helped a lot because I'm seeing less head tossing and weird chewing.

Either way, forward is still not really there, he walks very slow or not at all. So we spend a lot of time bending and leg yielding. When I ask for forward after we do this, he just wants to offer more bending and leg yielding. I have to wave my hands or encourage him to follow someone. I even tried putting cones out on the ground and encouraging him to touch each one in a row. Seemed to work better! He loves touching his cones!

Head down: I am working a bit more on this one, because he is a bit right brained sometimes. He gets the idea of this exercise, but isn't quite to the point where he will keep it there. He bounces his head up after he hears the click.

I ended up having to seriously practice this exercise one day because we found ourselves in the arena with 6 horses galloping around and even bucking. He was pretty nervous and climbing in my pocket I asked him to back out of my space and put his head down. He didn't like horses cantering so close and reacted; which wigged me out a bit and I'm sure he picked up on that. *sigh* But since then I've been fine and it doesn't scare me. I'm more worried about him bolting out in front of someone. He seems to try to avoid hitting me, even if he invades my space in a panic.

I have also discovered that he really prefers the front of the arena. Ooops! He was nervous at the middle and nervous to walk between stuff, though he will cooperate. Time to start working back there more!

Shoulder Yield: I worked on some shoulder movement away from pressure. He is very good at his right shoulder and I can even just point at his shoulder and he will cross his front legs and move away. Good boy!

His left shoulder isn't as good. He will even try to block me from walking to that side, and he will turn around and offer his right side instead, or move into me. I don't think he is being bad or hurting, I just think he is lazy and wants to offer the easy side. Turd.