Getting Ready for an Audition

Last night I had one of the best play sessions I've ever had with Pistol.  It was late, about 8:30pm, but he really wanted to play, so I went ahead and haltered him.  We've been practicing our haltering, because one of my co-workers keeps saying we should be level 4 in haltering no matter what level we are in anything else, so I figured that's what I would shoot for.  He will now turn his head to the left if I stand at his shoulder and draw him using my hand, and puts his nose in the halter for me.  Usually he puts his mouth on it first, but I have been letting him do that since I watched Linda Parelli haltering Allure and he did the same thing.  LBE, what can you do? :)  So once we had the halter tied, he was ready to go, so I sent him in a circle, because he usually gets himself really riled up.  Sure enough he started to buck, so I decided to change the pattern.  We started a traveling circle, and had TONS of obstacles in the way for him to look out for.  We travelled across the pen, and he settled into a beautiful canter, jumping over his pedestal, a barrel and a pole.  I headed back the way we came, and this time he stopped and hopped on to the pedestal.  I waited a second while he went up there, he looked at me, and I said thanks but I really wanted you to keep circling.  So off we went again, and when we got back to the other side of the fence, I asked for the sideways game.  He had a rough start with it, but managed to straighten out and finish pretty nicely, so it was back to a travelling circle.  I could sense he was getting bored, so we changed to Stick to Me, and headed for the tarp.  I asked him to trot over the tarp, and he did a wonderful job, so I asked him to canter back over it, which he also did.  The big green ball was sitting right next to the fence, so I asked him to go sideways on the fence, and instead of pushing it with his nose like normal, I asked him to push it with Zone 3.  He picked up on it right away, and I even saw some licking and chewing.  Then we pushed the ball to the tarp, which blew his mind.  The ball rolled across the tarp, and he got super excited, like "My two favorite props just COMBINED!"  I got creative with the tarp too, asking him to go sideways around it, sideways across it to me and away from, and back up across it, which led to even more licking and chewing.  Then we played the friendly game with the ball, bouncing it around to zone 5 and back to zone 1 and then to zone 5 on the other side.  He even let me bounce it up to zone 3 and rest it on his back, and then roll it down his tail.  I was ready to be done, but he wasn't, so I thought "why not? let's keep going" and we headed back over to the barrels.  He immediately looked at it like "I'm gonna jump!" and I said "No, lets go sideways around it" and got some more licking and chewing from him.  He went completely sideways all the way around it away from me, and then we changed directions and did it again.  Once we did that, I thought it was time to be done, and he agreed because he was so itchy.  So he got a nice scratch and a couple treats, and we had to be done anyways because it was getting dark.  It was so wonderful!  His ears were forward the whole time, and his whole attention was on me.  I was watching Level 2 passing auditions today on ParelliTube, and I'm feeling pretty confident about taping and submitting an audition of my own. :)