Training

I took Obama out for that fine Bank Holiday tradition, sitting in traffic in the rain,but the weather held off, and between Shillingford and Exeter the traffic was pretty cool, so we just buzzed down the flood relief channel to the river and Obama practiced bolting.
Everything was scary, sheep, sheep droppings, sheep footprints, lack of sheep footprints and so on ad infinitum.
We blatted around the area between the Quay and the Double Locks, either flat out with Obama waving his feet in my face, or sidling terrified towards some totally mythical threat. I am fitting the kicking strap before I drive again because high speed kicking hammering cross country through trees is distracting to say the least. Heading back home took forever, mostly with me leading an apparently terrified pony, who could only relax when his teeth were firmly anchored in a dandelion.
I could have brained him as a bad mannered, awkward, bloody minded so and so except for one factor. He went over the bridge over the A30 like an angel on the way out, and like an angel on the way home. His fear of bridges, ie bridges going over main roads, is entirely my fault. I took him over the very narrow curly footbridge over the A30 from Ide to Exeter with heavy traffic thundering under him at 70, and he has never forgiven me, or not till today. So he went through the foot bridge on the flood relief channel absolutely panicking at some really good new graffiti, but strolls over the A30 stopping to itch his backside halfway across.
He hasn't been out since we got back from Sussex on Tuesday, I don't know if he needed a rest, but I certainly did, so his performance was mostly about wanting to go out and fool around. But he has got over one of his major fears and I don't seem to have done anything except take him out and let him fool around. Some would say I never do much else, but working with the disabled, I expect, and get, reasonable behaviour from Obama.
His sympathy with learning difficulties isn't anything I taught him. His perfect behaviour when Isobel leads him, is I am sure, done to show me that he will behave perfectly for seven year olds, it is only idiots like me who can't handle him.
So I end a day with an absolutely brilliant result, but not one I was aiming for, or one that I did anything about. I feel the lessons from Dr Irene Pepperberg's parrot, Alex, are more relevant to horsemanship than we realise. And the main lesson is that they learn from us, all the time, except when we become unintelligible, because we are trying to teach.