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Yesterday I loaded the horses and popped up to pony club as planned.

This time I saddled Henry, did some groundwork to get him switched on and to allow him to have a look around, and hopped on.

I don't think I will ever be unimpressed by this baby horse. He was tense and nervous and distracted but he listened and worked quite well considering. We walked, trotted and cantered and I got him to focus on me. We didn't school anything in particular but I just worked on getting him to relax and work at my pace and bend!

Once I had gotten him to relax, focus and achieve some kind of bend to the right, I went for a walk on to the little cross country course to cool him down. I thought I would let him see a bank, a drop, and a ditch for the first time. He walked up and down the bank no problems and then I walked him over the ditch, fully expecting to have to lead him over it.

I have trained several horses from scratch now and all of them have been suspicious about ditches the first time. Henry? He just stepped over like he'd done it his whole life.

All in all it was a very successful outing and a big step forward in Henry's education and I got to ride Coolie too, who worked really well!