An interesting morning

Today was definitely an interesting morning.   I went to play with Pistol since things have dried up a bit, and man oh man, was he wound up.  We ended up doing some liberty in his "catch pen" because he wasn't feeling the halter at the time.  He ran around for a bit and thought he was really getting away with something because I "couldnt" catch him, and I just waited, and pretty soon he caught me. :)  After we played with the halter, and decided we could play on line today, I asked him for some pretty simple stuff, just a couple hind and fore hand yields, some yo-yo, and standing on the pedestal.  He did amazing with that, he is really putting it all together and realizing that he doesn't always have to gogogogogo.  It was so nice to see my exuberant little LBE yield just 1 step when I asked him softly, and then yield more when I asked for more.  Usually its more "oh did you want me to spin in a circle on a yield?" so that was a pleasant surprise that he paid attention to HOW I was asking him to yield.  I just keep shaking my head when he does things like that, because I don't expect it, but I think I'm not giving him enough credit, because he is smart enough and willing enough that I SHOULD expect it.  So we're working on that, but its a long process. :)  So after we got the halter on, we went to investigate his trailer, and he even did a fabulous job with that.  He went sideways to the fender and actually touched zone three to the fender, put zone one on the fender and the ramp, and put zone one over the ramp while I opened and closed it.  So because he was doing such a wonderful job, I decided to try and saddle him, which we have done before, just to keep in practice with it.  I still haven't ridden him because we're taking it slow, so right now, I saddle him, and we play with the saddle on, and then the saddle comes off and he's done.  The plan was to saddle him, and play stick to me around the front yard (our "arena") and do some circles, and possibly squeeze through the drainage ditches.  However, like Pat says, you deal with the horse that shows up.  The plan changed, in a big way.  I had the pad and saddle on him, and was going to get the girths on, and something spooked him, so the saddle slid, which scared him even more.  So we played some friendly with the pad and saddle to make sure he wouldn't be scared of it, and then moved on, skipping saddling.  My grandparents were working on the garden, and that was realy scary, so we had to go play yo-yo and squeeze by it, which was entertaining.  He gets wound up so easily, but then once he realizes there is nothing scary about it, he's fascinated!  He had to investigate the rake, and the bench, and the tree branches, and the trowel.  He even started picking things up and walking around with them.  Such a silly boy!  But then it got windy, and the flag started flapping, and that set him off again.  I've never seen him look UP at something before, but he looked up at the flag, and started to panic.  So, more yo-yo and squeeze, and then some touch-it and guess what?  That flag pole isn't very scary, it actually has lots of fun little things to play with on it(its a collapsable pole) so he had a good time pulling on all the strings, and lipping the knobs on it.  The flag started flapping while he did that, but he wasn't scared any more, which was nice.  He did look up at it still, but he didn't panic.  He just went right back to playing with the string.  I was just hoping he didnt untie it while he played with it, because then the flag would have come down right on top of him!  But he did such a good job overcoming his fears, that I decided to end the session right there, so we went and grazed for a bit, and headed for his pasture.  He is so connected to me now that I can let him graze on the lawn, without fences, and let go of his lead and he won't leave.  I've even experimented(because our liberty is so good, I'm fairly confident that even outside of a fence, when I ask him to "hide his hiney" he will do it) with dropping the lead and walking away, and he follows me, even though he doesn't have to.  To me, that is such a big deal, that even while he is outside, not attached to me, he still decides to stay with me, even though he could take off and be in the next county before I could catch him.  Even though my plan today didn't happen, I still ended up having a wonderful play session with him, and I feel like our relationship strengthens every time.  I could tell he was really trusting me today, even though things were scary.  He checked in a lot, which is something he didn't do at all when I first started playing with him.   I'm so glad I found him to be my partner.