Trailer woes

I had another fantastic ride today, spider really is a cute horse.

But.........

He can also be a mongrel when he wants to be. It started off nothing major, just a simple training blip in trailering that needed to be nipped in the bud, and it came out a full flown battle of wills.

So the deal was after the ride (which I'll talk about more) I hosed off, and packed up. Left the cover off for the trip home (the whole 3 minute drive). Loaded him on as per normal - great. However as soon as I walked back to do up the gate, something I've done everyday this past week - spider walked backwards and off the trailer grrr. Ok no worries I'll quickly make him trot a circle and back in. But the same thing happened - I walk back and he walks back. SOOOO Frustrating.

15 minutes later, I had backed him up substantially, he was refusing to even put a foot on the float - and a major hole in the training is very evident. I can not stand behind the shoulder and get him to move forwards and around me. Essentially lunging a small circle. He would not budge, even flicking with the end of the lead rope got nada.

Meanwhile... time is ticking away that I needed to be back at work. I rang the house up the hill and called someone down to give me a hand. Thats literally all I needed. Someone to close the bum bar for me. Tomorrow I'll be riding over at the arena again and it may crop up. But I'm cheating and taking food with me to occupy him until I get the door closed.

I've already discussed with a friend and we are going to work with him this weekend on leading and things like that.

On to the ride. Pretty good ride today. No wobblyness or kicking out. I started out with a good 6 laps of the arena at walk, asking for more activity with the squeeze, growl/kick technique. The yell has been reduced to more of a low grr in the back of the throat, and that was sufficient to get more movement. A couple of times I wasn't happy with the response so I upped the volume.. it was a tad embarrasing because there were some builders near by (I was planning on videoing the ride today - but they were around and I just felt a little weird). We moved onto trot. At first all I was doing was maintaining a contact and I did very very little work to get moving and active. The bad rein I had to do a bit more. I then went large and asked for more trot down the long side and got it - nice work :)
Canter - I kept it a bit short today. I get the feeling he isn't to happy on shifting surfaces, and someone else had been there before me and the arena was quite chopped up, so in canter he was really swinging around the corners and I could feel a couple of times he didn't quite get his back legs where they should have been....

Back to trot, and I felt that he understands that he has to move out, but not when or in response to leg. Which is fine - so I slowed the trot with rising asked a bit more with the contact for bend and I felt a few nice long strides come through. I then went and worked on response to the leg - he gets forwards and he knows he can move out, so now I think even after this short time it is time to start working on that. So just halt to walk 5 or 6 times, squeeze, yell kick scream was generally the way it went - and by the time I kicked and yelled he was thinking trot - which is fine, great in fact. And he was walking with the squeeze - but dwaddling. Something I need to clarify because I've never been through this exact training on another horse - is if I should be happy with the walk, or should be expecting a promt transition. He does very prompt ones into trot - but to walk... not so much.

I also noted today - I still have the horrible habit of hanging with one rein... its like my arm has a mind of its own. Hate it.

So after that reasonable ride today - it was really dissapointing to have the trailer issue...