Nov 17th

Had a bit of trouble catching him today, he objected to the way I was
putting the halter on and decided to run "away" which is to say circle
around the other horses. Roly decided to "help" by pretending that I
was also trying to catch him and basically encouraging Jimmy to run
away from me, but carrots prevailed as always and I had Jimmy within a
couple of minutes. He was good to ride, I took him to the big arena
and schooled him for about half an hour, he kept drifting towards the
gate but he didn't fuss about being way out of sight of the other
horses which was good. I need lessons! My dressage is a bit rusty. Not
that we did much, just walk and trot on a long rein getting him to
stretch forward and down, get those back muscles loosened up. Then we
had a canter on the grass around the arena in either direction, no
problems on the left rein but when we switched onto the right rein he
picked up the wrong lead four or five times (partly my fault for
giving him rubbish transitional aids) and was getting very annoyed at
me telling him to canter then bringing him straight back to trot as
soon as he did it. I'm sure it was very frustrating for him! We
eventually got the correct lead but by then he was being a bit silly
and feisty. Although his version of feisty so far seems to be "I'm
going to go slightly faster than you want and a bit sideways and fuss
with my head ooooh" which is hardly going to strike terror into my
heart. But anyway. He's an angel on the ground (aside from the
catching today although it's the first time in ages he's done that,
usually he walks right up to me) and very snuggly when he's being
groomed. Tried to eat the hoofpick on Monday, I turn my back for a
moment and he's got it in his mouth, chewing away. This carrot tastes
funny...