It was very cold and windy here today with a lot of shooting nearby and even Bella was quite jumpy in the school to begin with. For some reason the old saying came to my mind - you should tell a gelding, ask a mare and discuss it with a stallion. I thought how it is completely the other way around with my three. Bella and Grace take comfort and confidence from my being calmly but insistently assertive when they are feeling a bit nervous, whereas with Jack it has always been the case that the more nervous he is, the more I have to make sure that he knows that I AM discussing it with him, and not trying to make him do anything.

I have never known a horse try as hard as he does now to stay calm and steadfast. Yesterday, just as we halted, he jumped very slightly at something, then hopped backwards again, as if to say "whoops, didn't mean to do that, just pretend it never happened". Needless to say he got a jackpot for that!

However, watching the single rein riding on the DVDs has reminded me that I never did that much of it with Jack, and although I have done quite a bit of taking a contact on the inside rein and very carefully insisting that he softens first, before I do, in-hand, I still tend to give him the reins when he gets nervous when I'm riding him.

I really need him to get more like Bella and Grace in this respect, so that he gets into the habit of softening and listening to me no matter what, so I know that he will when it matters. The new DVDs are brilliant for demonstrating the mechanics of single rein riding in great detail, so that's what I now need to concentrate on with Jack, until I can 'tell' him when I need to, regardless of what is going on around us.