Yesterday rode for 25 minutes in the arena.  Worked on keeping him relaxed at the same time as requesting timely departs and halts. 

I am feeling my way.  Haven't yet looked at a Linda post about getting a connection with your horse.  Did read that despite a horse doing the 7 games well it's more a going through the motions.  The horse could still be focussed on the other horses or submitting because we've trained them to submit but without a connection.  That's been my *problem* all along.  Horses are smart.  They'll do what needs to be done to get you to leave them alone - but is that what I want from our relationship?  Balthazar submitting with no joy. 

I occasionally get Balthazar from the paddock and take him for pick only, no work.  But it's not every other day or anything like that.  He must know when I'm coming to get him it means work.  Still, like this morning, he usually gives a bit of a nicker (only for the carrot probably) and takes a step toward me.  That's fine by me.  Better than bolting in the opposite direction.

Today we went up Joe's Mountain.  I dismounted and walked up so I wouldn't collect the huge spiders which make their web across the track.  It's such a steep track with *jumps* of rock it wouldn't be fair, mid jump so to speak, to ask Balthazar to halt while I try and avoid one of those huge webs.  Once we cleared the top I mounted up and we explored the newly bulldozed tracks.  Much more relaxed about things.  Me, I mean.  I'm much more relaxed.  So he wants to smell some manure or lick some reddish clay (wonder what trace mineral he's getting from that?  Freya used to have a penchant for licking red clay too, so much so that she looked as though she was wearing badly applied lipstick), I don't have a problem with that - as long as he doesn't do it all the time.  If I feel he's taking liberties I push him on.  He breaks into a trot, that's okay as long as he comes back when asked. 

One of the tracks not cleared by the bulldozer follows the fenceline halfway up the mountain.  It girdles the mountain like a belt around a fat man's belly.   It's can be challenging as the path is very narrow, only a goat track and on the eastern side it falls away sharply so that one misstep could bring us tumbling down. 

It was so overgrown with lantana that I got off and broke branches to clear the way.  Balthazar was a star.  He waited patiently or walked forward when asked without crowding - and it was a tight squeeze for him.  I was very proud of him and proud to call him friend.  That quiet acceptance of being out with me, not fretting for the others, fretting to do something other than be where he was.

On the way down that steep track, again dismounted, I asked him to walk behind me.  There are places where he could walk beside me which he tried to do but if he did that then I wouldn't be able to concentrate on the spiders because I'd be trying to guide him down the safest track.  So I asked, just once, for him to follow rather than walk beside.  And he did.

It was such a lovely quiet uneventful ride.  Felt more like two friends out enjoying a Sunday stroll.  Despite the strolling he is getting a bit fitter, losing some grass belly, not that he had much, and coping better with the up and down geography of the terrain.