Playing tonight

I went out to play with Pistol, and had planned on working on the trailer again.  When I got out there, he reeeeeeeeeeeally wanted to run, so we played some catching game.  When he came up to me, I just had a feeling that the trailer would not be a good idea right now.  So, I grabbed the mounting block, and worked on coming sideways to it.  Pistol played soooo many games; "oh you want me to go forward? sideways AWAY? backwards? knock you off?".  But I had an answer for everything, and he finally went oh ok, and came to me sideways. Treat time!  So that got some licking and chewing, and the next time I asked, he was even softer about it.  Once he was reliably coming to me sideways, I started scratching him.  I've been noticing some rusty friendly spots, he is not very confident with the carrot stick on his opposite side across his back, so we played with that until he licked and chewed, and then I stood there scratching him for awhile.  He got so excited/stretched out that he moved away from me to the point that I couldnt safely scratch him while standing on the mounting block, so I started tapping his side with my hand, and he came back over to me!  I really scratched him for that.  He kept moving around, not really being confident with me in zone 3, so I just kept scratching wherever he presented to me.  Pretty soon I got some licking and chewing, and I started asking him to keep zone 3 next to me.  He still had his head high and was a little tense, so I just kept scratching and acting like no big deal, I'm just gonna scratch your other side, i'm gonna lean on you and scratch your hip, and so on.  Finally, after about 1/2 hour, he did a big sigh, lowered his head, and then did a couple big rolly-eyed yawns.  I stopped right there, and he did some more yawning after I took his halter off.  Sidenote: I am so proud of him when it comes to haltering/unhaltering.  He will now turn his head to me while I'm standing at his shoulder, and hold his head there while I halter him and unhalter him, and wait for me to completely remove the halter to move his head away.  He used to be SO bad about haltering, because the people at his old barn never asked him to hold his head still.  woo-hoo for progress!