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Day before yesterday I spent perhaps 3 minutes playing with Balthazar. Short and sweet. Today we probably worked for 10 minutes, perhaps longer. No mugging. No evasions. I walked away first and he followed. Walked out into the paddock and called him after grooming him thoroughly. He came and we started with wwylm, head down and some mirroring. He was very good. The wwylm was better, working well from either side. If he is this good next time I should probably start refining it so that I'm not luring him into position with the carrot but only c/ting when he is in position. I think he's familiar enough now with the concept to get that he has to stay at my shoulder. Once he has that we can start maneuvering so that he is doing shoulder in while wwylm.

He is improving with the head down, offering it even when not asked. He doesn't get a carrot for that. He didn't back as often today, perhaps because we were mostly working forward, walking about the circle I've made in the paddock. When I walked away from him - to give him a break so that he wouldn't evade - I'd cut across the circle so that we would have a change of direction in wwylm. It worked well for he would come up on the opposite side (except once when he came directly behind me but by holding the carrot out on the side I wanted him on, that wasn't a problem.

He did get a little excited but because of the frequent breaks it didn't get out of hand. There was a little burble of too much stallion behaviour but it was so quick and so quickly under control again that it didn't bother me. I think the breaks help him to keep things under control..

Our neighbour reiterated to Richard today that I was welcome to ride his land any time I wanted. It is so tempting to throw the saddle on and go. I miss riding the hills but I musn't rush things. We are nowhere near that stage. I could do it and Balthazar would be okay about it but I would much rather build a relationship where we enjoy our times together and it's fun for him too. I do need to get off my bum and work with him more than once a day. It doesn't take long and it would move things along if he knew that every time he saw me he has a good time. I keep thinking I must train him as though he is a dolphin, free shaping everything so that he never feels confined and it is his choice. Naturally it would be faster if I put him on a lead and lunged him and did all the exercises with him attached to me but I don't think it would ultimately work because it is his mind that I want to attach to not his head with a rope and halter.