Why do we skimp on porcupine?

Well I do anyway - I was playing with Maraschino this week and realised I had hardly done any - it's like you do it a few times, yes, that works, then forget all about it. Well I certainly seem to.

It's been really strange working with maraschino - as a youngster because he has no baggage really - and yet I am not starting at Level 1 with him in my learning - like I did with Garbo. So sometimes I feel like we've skipped some and I can't figure out what...

He was willing to be haltered which is nice - that was not always the case. We started with some Figure 8 - like Linda pointed out with Crest and Crest's owner in her blog post - I definitely micromanage them round the Figure 8.. I was trying to figure out how not to today. I walked backwards, gave him more rope, but he still stopped at each spool. Hmmmmm... more thinking required on that one.

We did some more circle game - interestingly enough my carrot stick with the savvy string was in the float and rather than get it I used my 2nd carrot stick without the savvy string and happy to say that Maraschino was not so sensitive to any movement of the stick... (ie just coming 1 cm off the ground).

He can't really manage more than one circle without stopping and facing me (behind me). But that's ok. We can trot together now with stick to me so that will be handy for the Golden Horse Show on November 28 (Paint Ring). I am going to be a rebel and take him in a brown rope hackamore.

We did another few squeezes between the tyre and the round pen and then called it a day. He licked and chewed for a bit after I took the halter off in the paddock we had been playing in, and then he nibbled grass then he took off with a buck back to the yards. Very funny.

Oh - we finished up with a bit of Porcupine!