Shorter days and less time

Chainsaw is so smart that now all I have to do when I have a halter on him is to point to his shoulder with an index finger and he will flex and touch that shoulder with his nose.  Our mounted shooting season is over so now there will be weekends to ride and get him a little further along before the ground freezes and things grind to a crawl riding wise.  Have the farrier coming out this Saturday to remove shoes from the horses with them and trim all four horses.  That way the snow that's not gonna fall won't pack under any shoes.

IN for the LONG HAUL

Has been a while since I have posted on Chainsaw.  We are going to Mounted Shoots every weekend now but that will be done after our event in Monticello Iowa on Oct 15-16.  So we leave on Fridays in the mid afternoon and return Sunday late.  I have been working with Chainsaw and he continues to improve.  We haven't even had any meltdowns or fits of bucking for quite a while now.  We have been doing lots of walk trot and one rein stops, etc.  He is loading into the trailer when asked now on the first try.  He's also calming down and getting less and less spooky.  He's learning to give to pressure.  In the past he'd hang up when being led from the barn and into the arena, needing to be pulled sideways to get his feet unstuck.  But now he seems to follow with little or no stopping so that's a good sign.  He's also giving to pressure and flexing from the saddle much better.  We have lots of walking, trotting and cantering circles ahead before I am going to intro him to much more like the gunfire and etc.    Good news is despite riding a slow horse all summer it looks like I will be the state high points for the mounted shooting once again~~~not in my class or etc but HIGH OVERALL points.  I am not the best or fastest, just pretty consistant and we did go to all of the events.