Today we were in the indoor arena, after the HTM kids finished their quiz, and we did a bunch of different races. One of the races was to go to the end of the arena, get off, walk around your horse, get back on, trot a small circle, and lope back.
Now, Monkey is considered one of the "spooky" horses out of all of the horses in the class. And, at times, he is spooky. But, I got off my horse (flying dismount, which he's getting used to) told him stand, walked all the way around him, and got back on, and he never moved a foot. Meanwhile my counterpart on the other team is busy chasing their horse down the arena because the horse spooked. And
that horse is considered one of the calm ones.
Also, after class, when there was only three of us in the arena, I decided to do a little experimenting, because I was bored. So, I tied my reins in a knot, dropped them over the saddle horn, and rode solely on leg signals for a few minutes. He did pretty good, nothing like a bitless reining pattern or anything, but other than some issues with stopping without the reins, and not wanting to turn into the fence a couple of times to do a roll back, he listened to my leg signals and my seat really well. We even loped circles on leg pressure alone. To the right, which is his good direction, but he
did lope past the gate after a left turn, which is one of the things we've been having issues with.
I'm pretty danged proud of him, and myself, tonight.